lELDS 


VZST-. -L.E'.  SERIES 


•b! 


^ut^ors. 


HE  great  popularity  of  the  "  Little  Classics  " 
I  has  proved  anew  the  truth  of  Dr.  Johnson's 
-'  remark :  "  Books  that  you  may  carry  to  the 
fire,  and  hold  readily  in  your  hand,  are  the  most  use- 
ful after  all."  The  attractive  character  of  their  con- 
tents has  been  very  strongly  commended  to  public 
favor  by  the  convenient  size  of  the  volumes.  These 
were  not  too  large  to  be  carried  to  the  fire  or  held 
readily  in  the  hand,  and  consequently  they  have  been 
in  great  request  wherever  they  have  become  known. 

The  Y&st^FQQk&t  Beries 

consists  of  volumes  yet  smaller  than  the  "  Little  Clas- 
sics." Their  Liliputian  size,  legible  t\-pe,  and  flexible 
cloth  binding  make  them  peculiarly  convenient  for 
carrying   on   short   journeys ;  and  the   excellence   of 


their    contents    makes    tliem   desirable    always    and 
everywhere.     The  series  includes 

STORIES,  ESSAYS,  SKETCHES,  AND  POEMS 

SELECTED    FROM    THE    WRITINGS   OF 


Emerson, 

Tennyson, 

Longfellow, 

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Whittier, 

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Hawthorne, 

Browning, 

Car/yie, 

Macaulay, 

Aldrich, 

Milton, 

Hood, 

Campbell, 

Gray, 

Owen  Meredith, 

Aytoun, 

Pope, 

Thomson 

i 

AND   OTHERS   OF   EQUAL   FAME. 

The  volumes  are  beautifully  printed,  many  of  them 
illustrated,  and  bound  in  flexible  cloth  covers,  at  a  j 
uniform  price  of 

FIFTY   CENTS   EACH. 

JAMES    R.  OSGOOD   &  CO.,  j 

Publishers,  Boston. 


'W^)£;'^W''/I^'  ' 


BARRY     CORNWALI 


Old   A^cgixcLZTitcLrice. 

BARRY    CORNWALL 

AND    SOME    OF     HIS     FRIENDS. 

BT 

JAMES   T.    FIELDS. 


All,  all  are  gone,  the  old  familiar  faces." 

CHAKLiiS   LA.MB. 


BOSTON: 
JAMES    R.  OSGOOD    AND    COMPANY, 

Late  Ticknor  &•  Fieids,  and  Fields,  Osgood,  &•  Co. 
1876. 


Copyright,  1876,  by 

James   t.  Fields. 


University  Press  :  Welch,  Bigelow,  &  Co., 
Cambridge. 


To  the  Wife  of  Bryan  Wallee  Peocter,  and  the 
Mother  of  Adelaide  Anne  Peoctee,  these  Recollections 
are  cordially  inscribed. 


Old  Acqnaintance,  shall  the  nights 

Ton  and  I  once  talked  together. 
Be  forgot  like  common  things.^" 


'■  His  thoughts  half  hid  in  golden  dreams, 
Which  make  thrice  fair  the  songs  and  streams 
Of  Air  and  Earth." 


Song  should  breathe  :f  scents  and  flowers ; 

Song  should  like  a  rirer  flow ; 
Song  should  bring  back  scenes  and  hours 

That  we  loved,  —  ah,  long  ago  ! " 

Barry  Cornwall. 


These  pages  are  reprinted  (with  some  additions)  from 
"  Harper's  Magazine,"  where  they  first  appeared  a  few- 
months  ago. 

April,  1S76. 


BARRY    CORNWALL 

AND  SOME  OF  HIS  FRIENDS. 


FIRST  saw  the  poet  five-and-twenty  years 
ago,  in  his  own  house  in  London,  at  No. 
13  Upper  Harley  Street,  Cavendish  Square. 
He  was  then  declining  into  the  vale  of  years,  but 
his  mind  was  still  vigorous  and  young.  My  letter 
of  introduction  to  him  was  written  by  Charles 
Sumner,  and  it  proved  sufficient  for  the  beginning 
of  a  friendship  which  existed  through  a  quarter  of 
a  century.  My  last  interview  with  him  occurred 
in  1869.  I  found  him  then  quite  feeble,  but  full 
of  his  old  kindness  and  geniality.  His  speech  was 
somewhat  difficult  to  follow,  for  he  had  been  slightly 
paralyzed  not  long  before ;  but  after  listening  to 
him  for  half  an  hour  it  was  easy  to  understand 
nearly  every  word  he  uttered.  He  spoke  with  warm 
feeling  of  Longfellow,  who  had  been  in  London 
during  that  season,  and  had  called  to  see  his  vener- 
able  friend   before   proceeding   to    the    Continent. 


10  OLD     ACQUAINTANCE. 

"  Was  n't  it  good  of  him,"  said  the  old  man,  in  his 
tremulous  voice,  "to  think  of  tne  before  he  had 
been  in  town  twenty-four  hours  ?  "  lie  also  spoke 
of  his  dear  companion,  John  Keuyon,  at  whose 
house  we  had  often  met  in  years  past,  and  he  called 
to  mind  a  breakfast  jjarty  there,  saying,  with  deep 
feeling,  "  And  you  and  I  are  the  only  ones  now 
alive  of  all  who  came  together  that  happy  nioru- 


A  few  months  ago,*  at  the  great  age  of  eighty- 
seven,  Bryan  AValler  Procter,  familiarly  and  honor- 
ably known  in  English  literature  for  sixty  years 
past  as  "Barry  Cornwall,"  calmly  "fell  on  sleep." 
The  schoolmate  of  Lord  Byron  and  Sir  Robert 
Peel  at  Harrow,  the  friend  and  companion  of 
Keats,  Lamb,  Shelley,  Coleridge,  Landor,  Hunt, 
Tulfourd,  and  Rogers,  the  man  to  whom  Thack- 
eray "  affectionately  dedicated  "  his  "  Vanity  Fair," 
one  of  the  kindest  souls  that  ever  gladdened  earth, 
has  now  joined  the  great  majority  of  England's  hal- 
lowed sons  of  song.  No  poet  ever  left- behind  him 
more  fragrant  memories,  and  he  will  always  be 
thought  of  as  one  whom  his  contemporaries  loved 
and  honored.  No  harsh  word  will  ever  be  spoken 
by  those  who  have  known  him  of  the  author  of 
"  Marcian  Colonna,"  "  31irandola,"  "  The  Broken 
Heart,"  and  those  charming  lyrics  which  rank  the 
*  October,  1S74. 


OLD     ACQUAINTANCE.  11 

poet  among  the  first  of  his  cdass.  His  songs  will 
be  sung  so  long  as  music  wedded  to  beautiful  po- 
etry is  a  requisition  anywhere.  His  verses  have 
gone  into  the  Book  of  Fanie,  and  such  pieces  as 
"Touch  us  gently,  Time,"  "  Send  down  thy  winged 
Angel,  God,"  "King  Death,"  "The  Sea,"  and 
"  Belshazzar  is  King,"  will  long  keep  his  memory 
green.  "VYho  that  ever  came  habitually  tnto  his 
presence  can  forget  the  tones  of  his  voice,  the  ten- 
derness in  his  gray  retrospective  eyes,  or  the  touch 
of  his  sympathetic  hand  laid  on  the  shoulder  of  a 
friend  !  The  elements  were  indeed  so  kindly  mixed 
in  him  that  no  bitterness  or  rancor  or  jealousy 
had  part  or  lot  in  his  composition.  No  distin- 
guished person  was  ever  more  ready  to  help  for- 
ward the  rising  and  as  yet  nameless  literary  man 
or  woman  who  asked  his  counsel  and  warm-hearted 
suffrage.  His  mere  presence  was  sunshine  to  a 
new-comer  into  the  world  of  letters  and  criticism, 
for  he  was  always  quick  to  encoui-age,  and  slow  to 
disparage  anybody.  Indeed,  to  be  human  only  en- 
titled any  one  who  came  near  him  to  receive  the 
gracious  bounty  of  his  goodness  and  courtesy.  He 
made  it  the  happiness  of  his  life  never  to  miss, 
whenever  opportunity  occurred,  the  chance  of  con- 
ferring pleasure  and  gladness  on  those  who  needed 
kind  words  and  substantial  aid. 

His  equals  in  literature  venerated  and  loved  him. 
Dickens  and  Thackeray  never  ceased  to  regard  him 


12  OLD     ACQUAINTANCE. 

with  the  deepest  feeling,  and  such  men  as  Brown- 
ing and  Tennyson  and  Carlyle  and  Forster  rallied 
about  him  to  the  last.  He  was  the  delight  of 
all  those  interesting  men  and  women  who  ha- 
bitually gathered  around  Rogers's  famous  table  in 
the  olden  time,  for  his  manner  had  in  it  all  the 
courtesy  of  genius,  without  any  of  that  chance 
asperity*  so  common  in  some  literary  circles.  The 
shyness  of  a  scholar  brooded  continually  over  him 
and  made  him  reticent,  but  he  was  never  silent 
from  iD-humor.  His  was  that  true  modesty  so  ex- 
cellent in  ability,  and  so  rare  in  celebrities  petted 
for  a  long  time  in  society.  His  was  also  that  happy 
alchemy  of  mind  which  transmutes  disagreeable 
things  into  golden  and  ruby  colors  like  the  dawn. 
His  temperament  was'the  exact  reverse  of  Fuseli's, 
who  complained  that  "  nature  put  him  out."  A 
beautiful  spirit  has  indeed  passed  away,  and  the 
name  of  "  Barry  Cornwall,"  beloved  in  both  hemi- 
spheres, is  now  sanctified  afresh  by  the  seal  of  eter- 
nity so  recently  stamped  upon  it. 

It  was  indeed  a  privilege  for  a  young  American, 
on  his  first  travels  abroad,  to  have  "Barry  Corn- 
wall "  for  his  host  in  London.  As  1  recall  the 
memorable  days  and  nights  of  that  long-ago  period, 
I  wonder  at  the  good  fortune  which  brought  me 
into  such  relations  with  him,  and  I  linger  with 
profound  gratitude  over  his  many  acts  of  unmerited 


OLD     ACQUAINTANCE.  13 

kindness.  One  of  the  most  intimate  rambles  I 
ever  took  with  him  was  in  1851,  when  we  started 
one  morning  from  a  book-shop  in  Piccadilly,  where 
we  met  accidentally.  I  had  been  in  London  only  a 
couple  of  days,  and  had  not  yet  called  upon  him  for 
lack  of  time.  Several  years  had  elapsed  since  we  had 
met,  but  he  began  to  talk  as  if  we  bad  parted  only 
a  few  hours  before.  At  tii'st  I  thought  his  mind 
was  impaired  by  age,  and  that  he  had  forgotten 
how  long  it  was  since  we  had  spoken  together.  I 
imagined  it  possible  that  be  mistook  me  for  some 
one  else ;  but  very  soon  I  found  that  his  memory 
was  not  at  fault,  for  in  a  few  minutes  he  began  to 
question  me  about  old  friends  in  America,  and  to 
ask  for  information  concerning  the  probable  sea-sick 
horrors  of  an  Atlantic  voyage.  "  I  suppose,"  said 
he,  "  knowing  your  iutirmity,  you  found  it  hard 
work  to  stand  on  your  immaterial  legs,  as  Hood 
used  to  call  Lamb's  quivering  limbs."  Sauntering 
out  into  the  street,  he  went  on  in  a  quaintly  humor- 
ous way  to  imagine  what  a  rough  voyage  must  be 
to  a  real  sufferer,  and  thus  walking  gayly  along,  we 
came  into  Leadenhall  Street.  There  he  pointed  out 
the  office  where  his  old  friend  and  fellow-magazin- 
ist,  "  Elia,"  spent  so  many  years  of  hard  work  from 
ten  until  four  o'clock  of  every  day.  Being  in  a 
mood  for  reminiscence,  he  described  the  Wednes- 
day evenings  he  used  to  spend  with  "  Charles  and 
Mary  "  and  their  friends  around  the  old  "mahogany- 


14  OLD     ACQUAINTANCE. 

tree  "  in  Russell  Street.  I  remember  he  tried  to 
give  me  an  idea  of  how  Lamb  looked  and  dressed, 
and  how  he  stood  beading  forward  to  welcome  his 
guests  as  they  arrived  in  his  humble  lodgings. 
Procter  thought  nothing  unimportant  that  might 
serve  in  any  way  to  illustrate  character,  and  so  he 
seemed  to  wish  that  I  might  get  an  exact  idea  of 
the  charming  person  both  of  us  prized  so  ardently 
and  he  had  known  so  intimately.  Speaking  of 
Lamb's  habits,  he  said  he  had  never  known  his 
friend  to  drink  immoderately  except  upon  one  occa- 
sion, and  he  observed  that  "  Elia,"  like  Dickens, 
■was  a  small  and  delicate  eater.  "With  faltering 
voice  he  told  me  of  Lamb's  "  givings  away "  to 
needy,  impoverished  fi-iends  whose  necessities  were 
yet  greater  than  his  own.  His  secret  charities  were 
constant  and  unfailing,  and  no  one  ever  suffered 
hunger  when  he  was  by.  He  could  not  endure  to 
see  a  fellow-creature  in  want  if  he  had  the  means 
to  feed  him.  Thinking,  from  a  depression  of  spir- 
its which  Procter  in  his  young  manhood  was  once 
laboring  under,  that  perhaps  he  was  in  want  of 
money,  Lamb  looked  him  earnestly  in  the  face  as 
they  were  walking  one  day  in  the  countiy  together, 
and  blurted  out,  in  his  stammering  way,  "  ^ly  dear 
boy,  I  have  a  hundred-pound  note  in  my  desk  that 
1  really  don't  know  what  to  do  with  :  oblige  me  by 
taking  it  and  getting  the  confounded  thing  out  of 
my   keeping."      "I    was  in  no   need  of  money," 


COLERIDGE. 


OLD     ACQUAINTANCE.  17 

said  Procter,  "and  I  declined  the  gift;  but  it  was 
hard  work  to  make  Lamb  believe  that  I  was  not  in 
an  impecunious  condition." 

Speaking  of  Lamb's  sister  Mary,  Procter  quoted 
Hazlitt's  saying  that  "  Mary  Lamb  was  the  most 
rational  and  wisest  woman  he  had  ever  been  ac- 
quainted with."  As  we  went  along  some  of  the 
more  retired  streets  in  the  old  city,  we  had  also,  I 
remember,  much  gossip  about  Coleridge  and  his 
manner  of  reciting  his  poetry,  especially  when 
"  Elia  "  happened  to  be  among  the  listenei-s,  for  the 
philosopher  put  a  high  estimate  upon  Lamb's  crit- 
ical judgment.  The  author  of  "  The  Ancient  Mari- 
ner" always  had  an  excuse  for  any  bad  habit  to 
which  he  was  himself  addicted,  and  he  told  Proc- 
ter one  day  that  perhaps  snuff  was  the  final  cause 
of  the  human  nose.  In  connection  with  Coleridge 
we  had  much  reminiscence  of  such  interesting  per- 
sons as  the  Novellos,  Martin  Burney,  Talfourd,  and 
Crabb  Robinson,  and  a  store  of  anecdotes  in  which 
Haydon,  Manning,  Dyer,  and  Godwin  figured  at 
full  length.  In  course  of  conversation  I  asked  my 
companion  if  he  thought  Lamb  had  ever  been  real- 
ly in  love,  and  he  told  me  interesting  things  of  Hes- 
ter Savory,  a  young  Quaker  girl  of  Pentonville,  who 
inspired  the  poem  embalming  the  name  of  Hester 
forever,  and  of  Fanny  Kelly,  the  actress  with  "  the 
divine  plain  face,"  who  will  always  live  in  one  of 
"  Elia's  "  most  exquisite  essays.     "  He  had  a  rev- 


18  OLD     ACQUAIXTAXCE. 

erence  for  the  sex,"  said  Procter,  "and  there  were 
tender  spots  in  his  heart  that  time  could  never  en- 
tirely cover  up  or  conceal." 

During  our  walk  we  stepped  into  Christ's  Hos- 
pital, and  turned  to  the  page  on  its  record  book 
where  together  we  read  this  entry  :  "  October  9, 
1782,  Charles  Lamb,  aged  seven  years,  son  of  John 
Lamb,  scrivener,  and  Elizabeth  his  wife." 

It  was  a  lucky  morning  when  I  dropped  in  to 
bid  "  good  morrow  "  to  the  poet  as  I  was  passing 
his  house  one  day,  for  it  was-  then  he  took  from 
among  his  treasures  and  gave  to  me  an  autograph 
letter  addressed  to  himself  by  Charles  Lamb  in 
1829.  I  found  the  dear  old  man  alone  and  in  his 
library,  sitting  at  his  books,  with  the  windows  wide 
open,  letting  in  the  spring  odors.  Quoting,  as  I  en- 
tered, some  lines  from  Wordsworth  embalming  May 
morninirs,  he  began  to  talk  of  the  older  poets  who 
had  worshipped  nature  with  the  ardor  of  lovers,  and 
his  eyes  lighted  up  with  pleasure  when  I  happened 
to  remember  some  almost  forgotten  stanza  from 
England's  "  Helicon."  It  was  an  easy  transition 
from  the  old  bards  to  "  Elia,"  and  he  soon  went 
on  in  his  fine  enthusiastic  way  to  relate  several  an- 
ecdotes of  his  eccentric  friend.  As  I  rose  to  take 
leave  he  said,  — 

"  Have  I  ever  given  you  one  of  Lamb's  letters 
to  carrv  home  to  America  V  " 


OLD     ACQUxVIXTA:NCE.  21 

"  No,"  I  replied,  "  and  you  must  not  part  with 
the  least  scrap  of  a  note  in  '  Elia's '  handwriting. 
Such  things  are  too  precious  to  be  risked  on  a  sea- 
voyage  to  another  hemisphere." 

"  America  ought  to  share  with  England  in  these 
things,"  he  rejoined ;  and  leading  me  up  to  a  sort 
of  cabinet  in  the  library,  he  unlocked  a  drawer  and 
got  out  a  package  of  time-stained  papers.  "  Ah," 
said  he,  as  he  turned  over  the  golden  leaves,  "  here 
is  something  you  will  like  to  handle."  I  unfolded 
the  sheet,  and  lo  !  it  was  in  Keats's  handwriting, 
the  sonnet  on  first  looking  into  Chapman's  Homer. 
"  Keats  gave  it  to  me,"  said  Procter,  "  many,  many 
years  ago,"  and  then  he  proceeded  to  read,  in  tones 
tremulous  with  delight,  these  undying  lines  :  — 

"  Much  Lave  I  travelled  in  the  realms  of  gold. 
And  many  goodly  states  and  kingdoms  seen ; 
Round  many  Western  islands  have  1  been 
"VVhicli  bards  in  fealty  to  Apollo  liold. 
Oft  of  one  wide  expanse  had  I  been  told 
That  deep-browed  Homer  ruled  as  his  demesne ; 
Yet  did  I  never  breathe  its  pure  serene 
Till  I  lieard  Chapman  speak  out  loud  and  bold: 
Then  felt  I  like  some  whtcher  of  the  skies 
When  a  new  planet  swims  into  his  ken, 
Or  like  stout  Cortez  when  with  eagle  eyes 
He  stared  at  the  Pacific  —  and  all  his  men 
Looked  at  each  other  with  a  wild  sunuise  — 
Silent,  upon  a  peak  in  Darien." 

I  sat  gazing  at  the  man  who  had  looked  on  Keats 
in  the  flush  of  his  young  genius,  and  wondered  at 


22  OLD     ACQUAINTANCE. 

my  good  fortune.  As  the  liviiiir  poet  folded  up 
again  the  faded  manusrript  of  the  illustrious  dead 
one,  and  laid  it  reverently  in  its  jjlace,  I  felt  grate- 
ful for  the  honor  thus  vouchsafed  to  a  wandering 
stranger  in  a  foreign  land,  and  wished  that  other 
and  worthier  votaries  of  English  letters  might  have 
been  present  to  share  with  me  the  boon  of  such  an 
interneAV.  Presently  my  hospitable  friend,  still 
rummaging  among  the  past,  drew  out  a  letter,  which 
was  the  one,  he  said,  he  had  been  looking  after. 
"  Cram   it  into   your   pocket,"  he   cried,  "  for    I 

hear   coming   down  stall's,  and  perhaps  she 

won't  let  you  carry  it  off!  "  The  letter  is  addressed 
to  B.  "\V.  Procter,  Esq.,  10  Lincoln's  Inn,  New 
Square.  I  give  the  entire  epistle  here  just  as  it 
stands  in  the  original  which  Procter  handed  me 
that  memorable  ^May  morning.  He  told  me  that 
the  law  question  raised  in  this  epistle  was  a  sheer 
fabrication  of  Lamb's,  gotten  up  by  him  to  puzzle 
his  young  correspondent,  the  conveyancer.  The 
coolness  ref  rred  to  between  himself  and  Robinson 
and  Talfourd,  Procter  said,  was  also  a  fiction  invented 
by  Lamb  to  carry  out  his  legal  mystification. 

Jayi'y  19,  1829. 
"My  dear  Procter,  —  1  am  ashamed  to  liave  not  taken 
the  drift  of  your  pleasant  letter,  which  I  find  to  have  been 
pure  invention.  But  jokes  are  not  suspected  in  Boeotian 
Enfield,  We  are  plain  people,  and  our  talk  is  of  com,  and 
cattle,  and  Waltham  markets.  Besides  1  was  a  little  out  of 
sorts  when  I  received  it.    The  fact  is,  I  am  involved  in  a 


OLD    ac<^uai:ntaxce.  1^3 

case  vvliich  has  fretted  me  to  death,  and  I  have  no  reliance 
except  on  you  to  extricate  me.  I  am  sure  you  will  give  me 
your  best  legal  advice,  having  no  professional  friend  l)esides 
hot  Robinson  and  Talfourd,  with  neither  of  whom  at  present 
I  am  on  the  best  terms.  My  brother's  widow  left  a  will, 
made  during  the  lifetime  of  my  brother,  in  which  I  am 
named  sole  Executor,  by  which  she  bequeaths  forty  acres 
of  arable  property,  which  it  seems  she  held  under  Covert 
Baron,  unknown  to  my  Brother,  to  the  heirs  of  the  body  of 
Elizabeth  Dowden,  her  married  daughter  by  a  first  husband, 
in  fee  simple,  recoverable  by  tine  — invested  property, 
mind,  for  there  is  the  difficulty  —  subject  to  leet  and  quit 
rent  —  in  short,  worded  in  the  most  guarded  terms,  to 
shut  out  the  property  from  Isaac  Dowden  the  liusband. 
Intelligence  has  just  come  of  tlie  death  of  this  person  in 
India,  where  lie  made  a  will,  entailing  this  property  (which 
seem'd  entangled  enough  already)  to  the  lieirs  of  his  body, 
that  should  not  be  burn  of  his  wife ;  for  it  seems  by  the 
Law  in  India  natural  children  can  recover.  They  have  put 
the  cause  into  Exchequer  Process  here,  removed  by  Certio- 
rari from  the  Native  Courts,  and  the  question  is  whether  I 
should  as  Executor,  try  the  cause  here,  or  again  re-remove 
to  the  Supreme  Sessions  at  Bangalore,  which  I  understand 
I  can,  or  plead  a  hearing  l)efore  the  Privy  Council  here. 
As  it  involves  all  the  little  property  of  Elizal)eth  Dowden, 
I  am  anxious  to  take  the  fittest  steps,  and  what  may  be  the 
least  expensive.  For  God's  sake  assist  me,  for  the  case  is  so 
embarrassed  that  it  deprives  me  of  sleep  and  appetite.  M. 
Burney  thinks  there  is  a  Case  like  it  in  Chapt.  170  Sect.  5 
in  Fearn's  Contiyujeid  Remainders.  Pray  read  it  over  witli 
him  dispassionately,  and  let  me  have  the  result.  The  com- 
plexity lies  in  the  questionable  power  of  the  liusband  to 
alienate  in  usum  enfeoffments  whereof  he  was  only  collater- 
ally seized,  etc." 

[On  the  leaf  at  this  place  there  arc  some  words 
ill  another  hand.  —  F.]         , 


24  OLD     ACQUAINTANCE. 

"  The  above  is  some  of  M.  Biimev's  memoranda,  which  he 
has  left  here,  and  you  may  cut  out  and  give  him.  I  had 
another  favour  to  beg,  which  is  the  beggarliest  of  beggings. 
A  few  lines  of  verse  for  a  young  friend's  Album  (si.v  will  be 
enough).  M.  Burney  will  tell  you  who  she  is  I  want  'em 
for.     A  girl  of  gold.     Si.v  lines  —  make  'em  eight  —  signed 

Barry   C .      They  need  not  be   ver}-  good,  as  I  chiefly 

want  'em  as  a  foil  to  mine.  But  1  sliall  be  seriously  obliged 
by  any  refuse  scrap.  We  are  in  tlie  last  ages  of  the  world, 
when  St.  Paul  prophesied  that  women  should  be  '  head- 
strong, lovers  of  their  own  wills,  having  Albums. '  1  fled 
hither  to  escape  the  Alhumean  persecution,  and  had  not 
been  in  my  new  house  2-t  hours,  when  the  Daughter  of  the 
ne.xt  house  came  in  with  a  friend's  Album  to  l)eg  a  contri- 
bution, and  the  following  day  intimated  she  had  one  of 
her  own.  Two  more  have  spning  uj)  since.  If  I  take  the 
wings  of  the  morning  and  fly  unto  the  uttermost  parts  of 
the  earth,  tliere  will  Alt)ums  be.  >'ew  Holland  has  Albums. 
But  the  age  is  to  be  complied  with.  M.  B.  will  tell  you 
the  sort  of  girl  I  request  the  10  lines  for.  Somewhat  of  a 
pensive  cast  what  you  admire.  The  lines  may  come  before 
the  Law  question,  as  that  can  not  be  determined  before 
Hilary  Terai,  and  I  wish  your  deliberate  judgment  on  that. 
The  other  may  be  flimsy  and  superficial.  And  if  you  have 
iiot  burnt  your  returned  letter  pray  re-send  it  me  as  a 
monumental  token  of  my  stupidity.  'T  was  a  little  un- 
thinking of  you  to  touch  upon  a  sore  subject.  "VNTiy,  by 
dabbling  in  those  accursed  Annuals  I  have  become  a  by- 
word of  infamy  all  over  the  kingdom.  I  have  sicken'd  de- 
cent women  for  asking  me  to  write  in. Albums.  There  be 
'  dark  jests '  abroad.  Master  Cornwall,  and  some  riddles 
may  live  to  be  cleared  up.  And  't  is  n't  every  saddle  is  put 
on  the  right  steed.  And  forgeries  and  false  Gospels  are  not 
peculiar  to  the  age  following  the  Apostles.  And  some  tubs 
don't  stand  on  their  right  bottom.  "Which  is  all  I  wish  to 
say  in  these  ticklish  Times  —  and  so  your  servant, 

"Chs.  L.\mb." 


s     OLD     ACQUAINTANCE.  27 

At  the  age  of  seventy-seven  Procter  was  invited 
to  print  his  recollections  of  Charles  Lamh,  and  his 
volume  was  welcomed  in  hoth  hemispheres  as  a 
pleasant  addition  to  "  Eliana."  During  the  last 
eighteen  j'ears  of  Lamb's  life  Procter  knew  him 
most  intimately,  and  his  chronicles  of  visits  to  the 
little  gamboge-colored  house  in  Enfield  are  charming 
pencillings  of  memory.  When  Lamb  and  his  sister, 
tired  of  housekeeping,  went  into  lodging  and  board- 
ing with  T W ,  their  sometime  next-door 

neighbor  —  who.  Lamb  said,  had  one  joke  and  forty 
pounds  a  year,  upon  which  he  retired  in  a  green  old 
age  —  Procter  still  kept  up  his  friendly  visits  to  his 
old  associate.  And  after  the  brother  and  sister 
moved  to  their  last  earthly  retreat  in  Edmonton, 
where  Charles  died  in  1834,  Procter  still  paid  them 
regular  visits  of  love  and  kindness.  And  after 
Charles's  death,  when  Mary  went  to  live  at  a  house 
in  St.  John's  Wood,  her  unfailing  friend  kept  up 
his  cheering  calls  there  till  she  set  out  "  for  that 
unknown  and  silent  shore,"  on  the  20th  of  Mav,  in 
1847. 

Procter's  conversation  was  full  of  endless  delight 
to  his  friends.  His  "  asides  "  were  sometimes  full 
of  exquisite  touches.  I  remember  one  evening  when 
Carlyle  was  present  and  rattling  on  against  Ameri- 
can institutions,  half  comic  and  half  serious,  Proc- 
ter, who  sat  near  mc,  kept  up  a  constant  under- 
breath   of    commentary,    taking   exactly   the   other 


28  OLD     ACQUAINTANCE. 

side.  Carlyle  was  full  of  horse-play  over  the  char- 
acter of  George  'V^*ashington,  whom  he  never 
vouchsafed  to  call  anything  but  George.  He  said 
our  first  President  was  a  good  surveyor,  and  knew 
how  to  measure  timber,  and  that  Avas  about  all. 
Procter  kept  whispering  to  me  all  the  while  Carlyle 
was  discoursing,  and  going  over  AVashington's  fine 
traits  to  the  disparagement  of  everything  Carlyle 
was  laying  down  as  gospel.  I  was  listening  to  both 
these  distinguished  men  at  the  same  time,  and  it 
was  one  of  the  most  cm-ious  experiences  in  conver- 
sation I  ever  happened  to  enjoy. 

I  was  once  present  when  a  loud-voiced  person  of 
quality,  ignorant  and  supercilious,  was  inveighing 
against  the  want  of  taste  commonly  exhibited  by- 
artists  when  they  chose  their  wives,  saying  they 
almost  always  selected  inferior  women.  Procter, 
sitting  next  to  me,  put  his  hand  on  my  shoulder, 
and,  with  a  look  expressive  of  ludicrous  pity  and 
contempt  for  the  idiotic  speaker,  whispered,  "  And 
yet  Vandyck  married  the  daughter  of  Earl  Gower, 
poor  fellow  !  "  The  mock  solemnity  of  Procter's 
manner  was  irresistible.  It  had  a  wink  in  it  that 
really  embodied  the  genius  of  fun  and  sarcasm. 

Talking  of  the  ocean  with  him  one  day,  he  re- 
vealed this  curious  fact :  although  he  is  the  author 
of  one  of  the  most  stirring  and  popular  sea-songs 
in  the  language,  — 

"The  sea,  the  sea,  the  open  sea!  "  — 


;  R  0  w  N  I  N  Q . 


OLD     ACQUAINTANCE.  31 

he  said  he  had  rarely  been  upon  the  tossing  element, 
having  a  great  fear  of  being  made  ill  by  it.  1  think 
he  told  me  he  had  never  dared  to  cross  the  Channel 
even,  and  so  had  never  seen  Paris.  He  said,  like 
many  others,  he  delighted  to  gaze  upon  the  waters 
from  a  safe  place  on  land,  but  had  a  horror  of  living 
on  it  even  for  a  few  hours.  I  recalled  to  his  recol- 
lection his  own  lines,  — 

"  I  'ni  on  the  sea  !   1  'm  on  tlie  sea ! 
I  am  where  I  would  ever  he,"  — 

and  he  shook  his  head,  and  laughingly  declared  T 
must  have  misquoted  his  words,  or  that  Dibdin  had 
written  the  piece  and  put  "  Barry  Cornwall's  "  sig- 
nature to  it.  We  had,  I  remember,  a  great  deal  of 
fun  over  the  poetical  lies,  as  he  called  them,  which 
bards  in  all  ages  had  perpetrated  in  their  verse,  and 
he  told  me  some  stories  of  English  poets,  over 
which  we  made  merry  as  we  sat  together  in  pleasant 
Cavendish  Square  that  summer  evening. 

His  world-renowned  song  of  "The  Sea  "  he  after- 
ward gave  me  in  his  own  handwriting,  and  it  is 
still  among  my  autographic  treasures. 

It  was  Procter  who  first  in  my  hearing,  twenty- 
five  years  ago,  put  such  an  estimate  on  the  poetry 
of  Robert  Browning  that  I  could  not  delay  any 
longer  to  make  acquaintance  with  his  writings.  I 
remember  to  have  been  startled  at  hearing  the  man 
who  in  his  day  had  known  so  many  poets  declare 
that  Browning  was  the  peer  of  any  one  who  had 


32  OLD     ACQUAINTANCE. 

written  in  this  century,  and  that,  on  the  ^vhole,  his 
genius  had  not  been  excelled  in  his  (Procter'sj  time. 
"  Mind  what  I  say,"  insisted  Procter;  "  Browning 
will  make  an  enduring  name,  and  add  another  su- 
premely great  poet  to  England." 

Procter  could  sometimes  be  prompted  into  de- 
scribing that  brilliant  set  of  men  and  women  who 
were  in  the  habit  of  congregating  at  Lady  Bless- 
ington's,  and  I  well  recollect  his  description  of 
young  N.  P.  "Willis  as  he  first  appeared  in  her  saJon. 
"  The  young  traveller  came  among  us,"  said  Proc- 
ter, "  enthusiastic,  handsome,  and  good-natured, 
and  took  his  place  beside  D'Orsay,  Biilwer,  Disra- 
eli, and  the  other  dandies  as  naturally  as  if  he  had 
been  for  years  a  London  man  about  town.  He  was 
full  of  fresh  talk  concerning  his  own  countiy,  and  we 
all  admired  his  cleverness  in  compassing  so  aptly 
all  the  little  newnesses  of  the  situation.  He  was 
ready  on  all  occasions,  a  little  too  ready,  some  of 
the  habitues  of  the  salon  thought,  and  they  could 
not  understand  his  cool  and  quite-at-home  mannei-s. 
He  became  a  favorite  at  first  trial,  and  laid  himself 
out  determined  to  please  and  be  pleased.  His  ever 
kind  and  thoughtful  attention  to  others  won  him 
troops  of  friends,  and  I  never  can  forget  his  un- 
wearied goodness  to  a  sick  child  of  mine,  with 
whom,  night  after  night,  he  would  sit  by  the  bed- 
side and  watch,  thus  relieving  the  worn-out  family 
in  a  wav  that  was  verv  tender  and  self-sacrificing." 


OLD     ACQUAINT A XCE.  35 

or  Lady  Blessinglon's  tact,  kindness,  and  remark- 
able beauty  Procter  always  spoke  with  ardor,  and 
abated  nothing  from  the  popular  idea  of  that  fascinat- 
ing  person.  He  thought  she  had  done  more  in  her 
time  to  institute  good  feeling  and  social  intercourse 
among  men  of  letters  than  any  other  lady  in  Eng- 
land, and  he  gave  her  eminent  credit  for  bringing 
forward  the  rising  talent  of  the  metropolis  without 
waiting  to  be  prompted  by  a  public  verdict.  As 
the  poet  described  her  to  me  as  she  moved  through 
her  exquisite  apartments,  surrounded  by  all  the  lux- 
uries that  naturally  connect  themselves  with  one  of 
her  commanding  position  in  literature  and  art,  her 
radiant  and  exceptional  beauty  of  person,  her  frank 
and  cordial  manners,  Ihe  wit,  wisdom,  and  grace  of 
her  speech,  J  thought  of  the  fair  Giovanna  of  Naples 
as  painted  in  "  Bianca  Visconti  "  :  — 

"  Gods  !  what  a  light  enveloped  her! 
Her  beauty 
Was  of  that  order  that  the  universe 

Seemed  governed  by  her  motion 

The  pomp,  the  music,  the  bright  sun  in  heaven, 
Seemed  glorious  by  her  leave." 

One  of  the  most  agreeable  men  in  London  liter- 
ai7  society  during  Procter's  time  was  the  com- 
panionable and  ever  kind-hearted  John  Kenyon. 
He  was  a  man  compacted  of  all  the  best  qualities 
of  an  incomparable  good-nature.  His  friend^  used 
to  call    him    "  the    apostle    of   cheerfulness."     He 


36  OLD     ACQUAIXTAXCE. 

could  not  endure  a  long  face  under  his  roof,  and 
declined  to  see  the  dark  side  of  anything.  He 
wrote  verses  almost  like  a  poet,  but  no  one  sur- 
passed hira  in  genuine  admiration  for  whatever  was 
exceUent  in  others.  No  happiness  was  so  great  to 
him  as  the  conferring  of  happiness  on  others,  and  I 
am  glad  to  write  myself  his  eternal  debtor  for  much 
of  my  enjoyment  in  England,  for  he  introduced  me 
to  many  lifelong  friendships,  and  he  inaugurated 
for  me  much  of  that  felicity  which  springs  from 
intercourse  with  men  and  women  whose  books  are 
the  solace  of  our  lifelong  existence.  How  often 
have  T  seen  Kenyon  and  Procter  chirping  together 
over  an  old  quarto  that  had  floated  down  from  an 
early  century,  or  rejoicjng  together  over  a  well-worn 
letter  in  a  family  portfolio  of  treasures  !  They  were 
a  pair  of  veteran  brothers,  and  there  was  never  a 
flaw  in  their  long  and  loving  intercourse. 

In  a  letter  which  Procter  wrote  to  me  in  March, 
1867,  he  thus  refers  to  his  old  friend,  then  lately 
dead :  "  Everybody  seems  to  be  dying  hereabouts,  — 
one  of  my  colleagues,  one  of  my  relations,  one  of 
my  sei-vants,  three  of  them  in  one  week,  the  last 
one  in  my  own  house.  And  now  I  seem  tit  for 
little  else  myself.  My  dear  old  friend  Kenyon  is 
dead.  There  never  was  a  man,  take  him  for  all  in 
all,  with  more  amiable,  attractive  qualities.  A  kind 
friend,  a  good  master,  a  generous  and  judicious  dis- 
penser  of  his  wealth,  honorable,   sweet-tempered. 


OLD     ACQUAINTANCE.  37 

r.nd  serene,  and  genial  as  a  summer's  day.  It  is 
ti-ue  that  he  has  left  me  a  solid  mark  of  his  friend- 
ship. I  did  not  expect  anything;  but  if  to  like  a 
man  sincerely  deserved  such  a  mark  of  his  regard,  I 
deserved  it.  I  doubt  if  he  has  left  one  person  who 
reaUy  liked  him  more  than  I   did.     Yes,  one  —  I 

think  one  —  a  woman 1  get  old  and  weak 

and  stupid.  That  pleasant  journey  to  Niagara,  that 
dip  into  your  Indian  summer,  all  such  thoughts  are 
over.  I  shall  never  see  Italy ;  I  shall  never  see 
Paris.  My  future  is  before  me, — a  very  limited 
landscape,  with  scarcely  one  old  friend  left  in  it.  I 
see  a  smallish  room,  with  a  bow-window  looking 
south,  a  bookcase  full  of  books,  three  or  four 
drawings,  and  a  library  chair  and  table  (once  the 
property  of  my  old  friend  Kenyon  —  1  am  writing 
on  the  table  now),  and  you  have  the  greater  part  of 
the  vision  before  you.  Is  this  the  end  of  all  things  ? 
I  believe  it  is  pretty  much  like  most  scenes  in  the 
fifth  act,  when  the  green  (or  black)  curtain  is  about 
to  drop  and  tell  you  that  the  play  of  Hamlet  or  of 
John  Smith  is  over.  But  wait  a  little.  There  will 
be  another  piece,  in  which  John  Smith  the  younger 
will  figure,  and  quite  eclipse  his  old,  stupid,  wrinkled, 
useless,  time-slaughtered  parent.  The  king  is  dead, 
—  long  live  the  king  !  " 

Kenyon  was  veiy  fond  of  Americans,  Professor 
Ticknor  and  Mr.  George  S.  Hillard  being  especially 
dear  to  him,     I  remember  hearing  him  say  one  day 


38  OLD     ACQUAIXTAN(   E. 

that  the  "  best  prepared  "'  young  foreigner  he  had 
ever  met.  who  had  come  to  see  Europe,  was  Mr. 
Hillard.  One  day  at  his  dinner-table,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  Mrs.  Jameson,  Mr.  and  Mis.  Carlyle,  "Walter 
Savage  Landor,  ]Mr.  and  Mrs.  Robert  Browning, 
and  the  Procters,  I  heard  him  declare  that  one  of 
the  best  talkers  on  any  subject  that  might  be  started 
at  the  social  board  was  the  author  of  "  Six  Months 
in  Italy." 

It  was  at  a  breakfast  in  Kenyon's  house  that  I 
first  met  ^Valter  Savage  Landor,  whose  writings  are 
full  of  verbal  legacies  to  posterity.  As  I  entered 
the  room  with  Procter,  Landor  was  in  the  midst  of 
an  eloquent  harangue  on  the  high  art  of  portraiture. 
Procter  had  been  lately  sitting  to  a  daguerreotypist 
for  a  picture,  and  Mrs.  Jameson,  who  was  veiy  fond 
of  the  poet,  had  arranged  the  camera  for  that  occa- 
sion. Landor  was  holding  the  picture  in  his  hand, 
declaring  that  it  had  never  been  sui-passed  as  a 
specimen  of  that  particular  art.  The  grand-looking 
author  of  "  Pericles  aud  Aspasia"  was  standing  in 
the  middle  of  the  room  when  we  entered,  and  his 
voice  sounded  like  an  explosion  of  first-class  artil- 
lery. Seeing  Procter  enter,  he  immediately  began 
to  address  him  compliments  in  high-sounding  Latin. 
Poor  modest  Procter  pretended  to  stop  his  ears  that 
he  might  not  listen  to  Landor's  eulogistic  phrases, 
Kenyon  came  to  the  rescue  by  declaring  the  break- 
fast had  been  waiting  half  an  boiu\     ^Vhen  we  ar- 


.'   I 


OLD     ACQUAINTANCE.  41 

rived  at  the  table  Landor  asked  Procter  to  join  him 
on  an  expedition  into  Spain  which  he  was  then  con- 
templating. "No,"  said  Procter,  "for  I  cannot 
even  '  walk  Spanish,'  and  having  never  crossed  the 
Channjl,  I  do  not  intend  to  begin  now." 

"  Never  crossed  the  Channel !  "  roared  Landor, — 
"  never  saw  Napoleon  Bonaparte  !  "  He  then  began 
to  tell  us  how  the  young  Corsican  looked  when  he 
first  saw  him,  saying  that  he  had  the  olive  com- 
plexion and  roundness  of  face  of  a  Greek  girl ;  that 
the  consul's  voice  was  deep  and  melodious,  but  un- 
truthful in  tone.  While  we  were  eating  breakfast 
he  went  on  to  describe  his  Italian  travels  in  early 
youth,  telling  us  that  he  once  saw  Shelley  and  Byron 
meet  in  the  doorway  of  a  hotel  in  Pisa.  Landor 
had  lived  in  Italy  many  years,  for  he  detested  the 
climate  of  his  native  country,  and  used  to  say  "  one 
could  only  live  comfortably  in  England  who  was  rich 
enough  to  have  a  solar  system  of  his  own." 

The  Prince  of  Carpi  said  of  Erasmus  he  was  so 
thin-skinned  that  a  fly  would  draw  blood  from  him. 
The  author  of  the  "  Imaginary  Conversations  "  had 
the  same  infirmity.  A  very  little  thing  would  dis- 
turb him  for  hours,  and  his  friends  were  never  sure 
of  his  equanimity.  I  was  present  once  when  a 
blundering  friend  trod  unwittingly  on  his  favorite 
prejudice,  and  Landor  went  off  instanter  like  a  blas- 
pheming torpedo.  There  were  three  things  in  the 
world  which  received  no  quarter  at  his  hands,  and 


42  OLD     ACQUAINTANCE. 

■vslien  in  the  slightest  degree  he  scented  h>/pocrisif, 
Pharisaism,  or  tyraniuj,  straightway  he  hecame  furi- 
ous,  and  laid  about  him  like  a  mad  giant. 

Procter  told  me  that  when  Landor  got  into  a 
passion,  his  rage  was  sometimes  uncontrollable. 
The  fiery  spirit  knew  his  weakness,  but  his  anger 
quite  overmastered  him  in  spite  of  himself,  "  Keep 
your  temper,  Landor,"  somebody  said  to  him  one 
day  when  he  was  raging.  "  That  is  just  what  I 
don't  wish  to  keep,"  he  cried  ;  "  I  wish  to  be  rid 
of  such  an  infamous,  ungovernable  thing.  I  don't 
wish  to  keep  my  temper."  "Whoever  wishes  to  get 
a  good  look  at  Landor  will  not  seek  for  it  alone  in 
John  Forster's  interesting  life  of  the  old  man,  ad- 
mirable as  it  is,  but  will  turn  to  Dickens's  "  Bleak 
House  "  for  side  glances  at  the  great  author.  In 
that  vivid  story  Dickens  has  made  his  friend  Landor 
sit  for  the  portrait  of  Lawrence  Boythoru.  The 
very  laugh  that  made  the  whole  house  vibrate,  the 
roundness  and  fulness  of  voice,  the  fury  of  superla- 
tives, are  all  given  in  Dickens's  best  manner,  and  no 
one  who  has  ever  seen  Landor  for  half  an  hour 
could  possibly  mistake  Boythoru  for  anybody  else. 
Talking  the  matter  over  once  with  Dickens,  he  said, 
"  Landor  always  took  that  presentation  of  himself 
in  hearty  good-humor,  and  seemed  rather  proud  of 
the  picture."  This  is  Dickens's  portrait :  "  He  was 
not  only  a  very  handsome  old  gentleman,  upright  aud 
stalwart,  with  a  massive  gray  head,  a  fine  composure 


OLD     ACQUAINTAXCE.  43 

of  face  when  silent,  a  figure  that  might  have  Become 
corpulent  but  for  his  being  so  continually  in  earnest 
that  he  gave  it  no  rest,  and  a  chin  that  might  have 
subsided  into  a  double  chin  but  for  the  vehement  em- 
phasis in  which  it  was  constantly  required  to  assist ; 
but  he  was  such  a  true  gentleman  in  his  manner,  so 
chivalrously  polite,  his  face  was  lighted  by  a  smile 
of  so  much  sweetness  and  tenderness,  and  it  seemed 
so  plain  that  he  had  nothing  to  hide,  that  really  I 
could  not  help  looking  at  him  with  equal  pleasure, 
whether  he  smilingly  conversed  with  Ada  and  me, 
or  was  led  by  Mr.  Jarndyce  into  some  great  volley 
of  superlatives,  or  threw  up  his  head  like  a  blood- 
hound, and  gave  out  that  tremendous  Ha !  ha ! 
ha!" 

Landor's  energetic  gravity,  when  he  was  propos- 
ing some  colossal  impossibility,  the  observant  novel- 
ist would  naturally  seize  on,  for  Dickens  was  always 
on  the  lookout  foi-  exaggerations  in  human  language 
and  conduct.  It  was  at  Procter's  table  1  heard 
Dickens  describe  a  scene  which  transpired  after 
the  publication  of  the  "  Old  Curiosity  Shop."  It 
seems  that  the  first  idea  of  Little  Nell  occurred  to 
Dickens  when  he  was  on  a  birthday  visit  to  Landor, 
then  living  in  Bath.  The  old  man  was  residing  in 
lodgings  in  St.  James  Square,  in  that  city,  and  ever 
after  connected  Little  Nell  with  that  particular 
spot.  No  character  in  prose  fiction  was  a  greater 
favorite  with  Landor,  and  one  day,  years  after  the 


44  OLD     ACQUAIXTAXCE. 

story  was  published,  he  burst  out  with  a  tremendous 
emphasis,  and  declared  the  one  mistake  of  his  life 
Avas  that  he  had  not  purchased  the  house  in  Bath, 
and  then  and  there  burned  it  to  the  ground,  so  that 
no  meaner  association  should  ever  desecrate  the 
birthplace  of  Little  Nell ! 

It  was  Procter's  old  schoolmaster  (Dr.  Druiy, 
head-master  of  Harrow)  who  was  the  means  of  in- 
troducing Edmund  Kean,  the  great  actor,  on  the 
London  stage.  Procter  delighted  to  recall  the 
many  theatrical  triumphs  of  the  eccentric  tragedian, 
and  the  memoir  which  he  printed  of  Kean  will  al- 
ways  be  read  with  interest.  I  heard  the  poet  one 
evening  describe  the  player  most  graphically  as  he 
appeared  in  Sir  Giles  .Overreach  in  1816  at  Drury 
Lane,  when  he  produced  such  an  effect  on  Lord 
Byron,  who  sat  that  night  in  a  stage-box  with  Tom 
Moore.  His  lordship  was  so  overcome  by  Kean's 
magnificent  acting  that  he  fell  forward  in  a  convul- 
sive fit,  and  it  was  some  time  before  he  regained 
his  wonted  composure.  Douglas  Jerrold  said  that 
Kean's  appearance  in  Shakespeare's  Jew  was  like  a 
chapter  out  of  Genesis,  and  all  who  have  seen  the 
incomparable  actor  speak  of  his  tiger-like  power 
and  infinite  grace  as  unrivalled. 

At  Procter's  house  the  best  of  England's  cele- 
brated men  and  women  assembled,  and  it  was  a  kind 
of  enchantment  to  converse  with  the  ladies  one  met 
there.     It  was  indeed  a  privilege  to  be  received  by 


I  s  s    p  R  c  : 


OLD     ACQUAINTANCE.  47 

the  hostess  herself,  for  Mrs.  Procter  was  not  only 
sure  to  be  the  most  brilliant  person  among  her 
guests,  but  she  practised  habitually  that  exquisite 
courtesy  toward  all  which  renders  even  a  stranger, 
unwonted  to  London  drawing-rooms,  free  from  awk- 
wardness and  that  constraint  which  are  almost  in- 
separable from  a  first  appearance. 

Among  the  persons  I  have  seen  at  that  house  of 
urbanity  in  London  I  distinctly  recall  old  Mrs. 
Montague,  the  mother  of  Mrs.  Procter.  She  had 
met  Robert  Burns  in  Edinburgh  when  he  first  came 
up  to  that  city  to  bring  out  his  volume  of  poems. 
"  I  have  seen  many  a  handsome  man  in  my  time," 
said  the  old  lady  one  day  to  us  at  dinner,  "  but 
never  such  a  pair  of  eyes  as  young  Robbie  Burns 
kept  flashing  from  under  his  beautiful  brow."  Mrs. 
Montague  was  much  interested  in  Charles  .Sumner, 
and  predicted  for  him  all  the  eminence  of  his  after- 
position.  \Yith  a  certain  other  American  visitor 
she  had  no  patience,  and  spoke  of  him  to  me  as  a 
"  note  of  interrogation,  too  curious  to  be  comfort- 
able." 

I  distinctly  recall  Adelaide  Procter  as  I  first  saw 
her  on  one  of  my  early  visits  to  her  father's  house. 
She  was  a  shy,  bright  girl,  and  the  poet  drew  my 
attention  to  her  as  she  sat  reading  in  a  corner  of 
the  library.  Looking  at  the  young  maiden,  intent 
on  her  book,  I  remembered  that  exquisite  sonnet  in 
her  father's  volume,  bearing  date  November,  1825, 


48  OLD     ACQUAIXTAXCE. 

addressed   to    the    infant  just  a   month   after   her 
birth :  — 

"  Child  of  my  heart !     My  sweet,  beloved  First-born ! 
Thou  dove  who  tidings  Ijring'st  of  calmer  hours  I 
Thou  rainbow  who  dost  shme  when  all  the  showers 
Are  past  or  passing  !     Rose  which  hath  no  thorn, 
^'o  spot,  no  blemish,  —  pure  and  unforlorn, 
Untouched,  untainted !     0  my  ilower  of  flowers ! 
More  welcome  than  to  bees  are  summer  bowers. 
To  strjinded  seamen  life-assuring  morn ! 
Welcome,  a  thousand  welcomes  I     Care,  who  clings 
Round  all,  seems  loosening  now  its  serpent  fold  -. 
Js'ew  hope  springs  upward ;  and  the  briglit  world  seems 
Cast  back  into  a  youth  of  endless  springs ! 
Sweet  mother,  is  it  so  r  or  grow  I  old, 
Bewildered  in  divine  Elysian  dreams?  " 

I  whispered  in  the  poet's  ear  my  admiration  of 
the  sonnet  and  the  beautiful  subject  of  it  as  we  sat 
looking  at  her  absorbed  in  the  volume  on  her  knees. 
Procter,  in  response,  murmured  some  words  expres- 
sive of  his  joy  at  having  such  a  gift  from  God  to 
gladden  his  affectionate  heart,  and  he  told  me  after- 
wai'd  what  a  comfort  Adelaide  had  always  been  to 
his  household.  He  described  to  me  a  visit  "Words- 
worth made  to  his  house  one  day,  and  how  gentle 
the  old  man's  aspect  was  when  he  looked  at  the 
children.  "  He  took  the  hand  of  my  dear  Adelaide 
in  his,"  said  Procter,  "  and  spoke  some  words  to 
her,  the  recollection  of  which  helped,  perhaps,  with 
other  things,  to  incline  her  to  poetry,"  "When  a 
little  child  "  the  golden-tressed  Adelaide,"   as  the 


WORDSWOR- 


OLD     ACQUAINTANCE.  51 

poet  calls  her  in  one  of  his  songs,  must  often  have 
heard  her  father  read  aloud  his  own  poems  as  they 
came  fresh  fi-om  the  fount  of  song,  and  the  impres- 
sion no  doubt  wrought  upon  her  young  imagination 
a  spell  she  could  not  resist.  On  a  sensitive  mind 
like  hers  such  a  piece  as  the  "  Petition  to  Time  " 
could  not  fail  of  producing  its  full  effect,  and  no 
girl  of  her  temperament  would  be  unmoved  by  the 
music  of  words  like  these  :  — 

"  Touch  us  gently,  Time  ! 

Let  us  glide  adown  thy  stream 
Gently,  as  we  sometimes  glide 

Through  a  quiet  dream. 
Humble  voyagers  are  we, 
Husband,  wife,  and  children  three. 
(One  is  lost,  an  angel,  fled 
To  the  azure  overhead.) 

"  Touch  us  gently.  Time ! 

We  've  not  proud  nor  soaring  wings: 
Our  ambition,  our  content, 

Lie  in  simple  things. 
Humble  voyagers  are  we, 
O'er  Life's  dim  unsounded  sea, 
Seeking  only  some  calm  clmie  : 
Touch  us  gently,  gentle  Time !  " 

Adelaide  Procter's  name  will  always  be  sweet  in 
the  annals  of  English  poetry.  Her  place  was  as- 
sured from  the  time  when  she  made  her  modest 
advent,  in  1853,  in  the  columns  of  Dickens's 
"  Household  "Words,"  and  everything  she  wrote 
from  that  period  onward  until  she  died  gave  evi- 


D'2  OLD     ACQUAINTANCE. 

deuce  of  strikiiiir  and  peculiar  talent.  I  have  heard 
Dickens  desciibe  how  she  first  began  to  proffer  con- 
tributions to  his  columns  over  a  feigned  name,  that 
of  Miss  Mary  Berwick  ;  how  he  came  to  think  that 
his  unknown  correspondent  must  be  a  governess  ; 
how,  as  time  went  on,  he  learned  to  vahie  his  new 
contributor  for  her  self-reliance  and  punctuality, — 
qualities  upon  which  Dickens  always  placed  a  high 
value  ;  how  at  last,  going  to  dine  one  day  with  his 
old  friends  the  Procters,  he  launched  enthusiasti- 
cally out  in  praise  of  Maiy  Berwick  ithe  writer 
hereelf,  Adelaide  Procter,  sitting  at  the  table)  ;  and 
how  the  delighted  mother,  being  in  the  secret,  re- 
vealed, with  teai's  of  joy,  the  real  name  of  the  young 
aspirant.  Although  , Dickens  has  told  the  whole 
story  most  feelingly  in  an  introduction  to  Miss 
Procter's  "  Legends  and  Lyrics,"  issued  after  her 
death,  to  hear  it  from  his  own  lips  and  sympathetic 
heart,  as  I  have  done,  was,  as  may  be  imagined, 
something  better  even  than  reading  his  pathetic 
words  on  the  printed  page. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  ladies  in  London 
literary  society  in  the  period  of  which  I  am  writing 
was  ^Irs.  Jameson,  the  dear  and  honored  friend  of 
Procter  and  his  family.  During  many  years  of  her 
later  life  she  stood  in  the  relation  of  consoler  to  her 
sex  in  England.  Women  in  mental  anguish  needing 
consolation  and  counsel  fled  to  her  as  to  a  convent 
for  protection  and  guidance.      Her  published  writ- 


MRS        J  A  M  E! 


OLD     ACQUAINTANCE.  55 

ings  established  such  a  claim  upon  her  sympathy  in 
the  hearts  of  her  readers  that  much  of  her  time  for 
twenty  years  before  she  died  was  spent  in  helping 
others,  by  correspondence  and  personal  contact,  to 
submit  to  the  sorrows  God  had  cast  upon  them. 
She  believed,  with  Milton,  that  it  is  miserable  enough 
to  be  blind,  but  still  more  miserable  not  to  be  able  to 
bear  blindness.  Her  own  earlier  life  had  been  dark- 
ened by  griefs,  and  she  knew  from  a  deep  experience 
what  it  was  to  enter  the  cloud  and  stand  waiting 
and  hoping  in  the  shadows.  In  her  instructive  and 
delightful  society  I  spent  many  an  hour  twenty 
years  ago  in  the  houses  of  Procter  and  Rogers  and 
Kenyon.  Procter,  knowing  my  admiration  of  the 
Kemble  family,  frequently  led  the  conversation  up 
to  that  regal  line  which  included  so  many  men 
and  women  of  genius.  Mrs.  Jameson  was  never 
weary  of  being  questioned  as  to  the  legitimate  su- 
premacy of  Mrs.  Siddous  and  her  nieces,  Fanny 
and  Adelaide  Kemble.  While  Rogers  talked  of 
Garrick,  and  Procter  of  Kean,  she  had  no  enthusi- 
asms that  were  not  bounded  in  by  those  fine  spirits 
whom  she  had  watched  and  worshipped  from  her 
earliest  years. 

Now  and  then  in  the  garden  of  life  we  get  that 
special  bite  out  of  the  sunny  side  of  a  peach.  One 
of  my  own  memorable  expei-iences  in  that  way  came 
in  this  wise.  I  had  heard,  long  before  I  went 
abroad,  so  much   of  the  singing  of  the  youngest 


56  OLD     ACQUAIXTANCK. 

child  of  the  "Olympian  dynasty,"  Adelaide  Kem- 
ble,  so  much  of  a  brief  career  crowded  with  tri- 
umphs on  the  lyric  stage,  that  I  longed,  if  it  might 
be  possible,  to  listen  to  "  the  true  daughter  of  her 
race."  Th  ;  rest  of  her  family  for  years  had  been, 
as  it  were,  "nourished  on  Shakespeare,"  and 
achieved  greatness  in  that  high  walk  of  genius ; 
but  now  came  one  who  could  interpret  Mozart, 
Bellini,  and  ^lercadante,  one  who  could  equal  what 
Pasta  and  Malibran  and  Persiani  and  Grisi  had 
taught  the  ^yorld  to  understand  and  worship. 
"  Ah  !  "  said  a  friend,  "  if  you  could  only  hear  her 
sing  '  Casta  Diva  ! '  "  "  Yes,"  said  another,  "  and 
'  Anld  Robin  Gray  I '  "  Xo  wonder,  I  thought,  at 
the  universal  enthusiasm  for  a  vocal  and  lyrical 
artist  who  can  alternate  with  equal  power  from 
"Casta  Diva"  to  "  Auld  Robin  Gray."  I  must 
hear  her!  She  had  left  the  §tage,  after  a  brief 
glory  npon  it,  but  as  Madame  Sartoris  she  some- 
times sang  at  home  to  her  guests. 

"  ^Ve  are  invited  to  hear  some  music  this  even- 
ing,"  said  Procter  to  me  one  day,  "  and  you  must 
go  with  us."  I  went,  and  our  hostess  was  the 
once  magnificent  prima  donna!  At  intervals 
thi'oughout  the  evening,  with  a  voice 

"  That  crowds  and  hurries  and  precipitates 
"With  thick  fast  warble  its  delicious  notes," 

she  poured  out  her  full  soul  in  melody.  We  all 
know    her   now   as    the    author   of  that    exquisite 


OLD     A  C  Q  U  A I  X  T  A  N  C  E .  0 / 

"  Week  in  a  French  Country-House,"  and  her 
fascinating  book  somehow  always  mingles  itself  in 
my  memoiy  with  the  enchanted  evening  when  I 
heard  her  sing.  As  she  sat  at  the  piano  in  all  her 
majestic  beauty,  I  imagined  her  a  sort  of  later  St, 
Cecilia,  and  could  have  wished  for  another  Raphael 
to  paint  her  worthily.  Henry  Chorley,  who  was 
present  on  that  memorable  evening,  seemed  to  be  in 
a  kind  of  nervous  rapture  at  hearing  again  the  su- 
preme and  willing  singer.  Procter  moved  away 
into  a  dim  corner  of  the  room,  and  held  his  tremu- 
lous hand  ov^er  his  eyes.  The  old  poet's  sensitive 
spirit  seemed  at  times  to  be  going  out  on  the 
breath  of  the  glorious  artist  who  was  thrilling  us 
all  with  her  power.  Mi-s.  Jameson  bent  forward 
to  watch  every  motion  of  her  idol,  looking  applause 
at  every  noble  passage.  Another  lady,  whom  I  did 
not  know,  was  tremulous  with  excitement,  and  T 
could  well  imagine  what  might  have  taken  ])lace 
when  the  "  impassioned  chautress  "  sang  and  enacted 
Scmiramide  as  1  have  heard  it  described.  Every 
one  present  was  inspired  by  her  fine  mien,  as  well 
as  by  her  transcendent  voice.  Mozart,  Rossini, 
Bellini,  Cherubini,  —  how  she  flung  herself  that 
night,  with  all  her  gifts,  into  their  highest  com- 
positions !  As  she  I'ose  and  was  walking  away 
from  the  piano,  after  singing  an  air  from  the 
"Medea"  with  a  pathos  that  no  musically  unedu- 
cated  pen   like   mine  can   or  ought   to   attempt  a 


58  OLD     ACQUAINTANCE. 

description  of,  some  one  intercepted  her  and  whis- 
pered a  request.  Again  she  turned,  and  walked 
toward  the  instrument  like  a  queen  among  her  ad- 
miring court.  A  flash  of  lightning,  followed  hy  a 
peal  of  thunder  that  jarred  the  house,  stojjped  her 
for  a  moment  on  her  way  to  the  piano.  A  sudden 
summer  tempest  was  gathering,  and  crash  after 
crash  made  it  impossible  for  her  to  begin.  As  she 
stood  Availing  for  the  "  elemental  fury  "  to  subside, 
her  attitude  was  quite  worthy  of  the  niece  of  Mrs. 
Siddons.  "When  the  thunder  had  grown  less  fre- 
quent, she  threw  back  her  beautiful  classic  head 
and  touched  the  keys.  The  air  she  had  been 
called  upon  to  sing  was  so  wild  aud  weird,  a  dead 
silence  fell  upon  the  room,  and  an  influence  as  of 
terror  pervaded  the  whole  assembly.  It  was  a  song 
by  Dessauer,  which  he  had  composed  for  her  voice, 
the  words  by  Tennysou.  No  one  who  was  present 
that  evening  can  forget  how  she  broke  the  silence 
with 

"  We  were  two  daughters  of  oue  race," 

or  how  she  uttered  the  words, 

"  The  wind  13  roaring  m  turret  aud  tree." 

It  was  like  a  scene  in  a  great  tragedy,  and  then  I 
fully  understood  the  worship  she  had  won  as  be- 
longing only  to  those  consummate  artists  who  have 
arisen  to  dignify  and  ennoble  the  lyric  stage.  As 
we  left  the  house  Procter  said,  "  You  are  in  sreat 


OLD     ACQUAINTANCE.  59 

luck  to-iiight.     I  never  heard  her  sing  more  di- 
vinely." 

The  Poet  frequently  spoke  to  me  of  the  old  days 
when  he  was  contributing  to  the  "  London  Maga- 
zine," which  lifty  years  ago  was  deservedly  so  pop- 
ular in  Great  Britain.  All  the  "best  talent"  (to 
Use  a  modern  advertisement  phrase)  wrote  for  it. 
Carlyle  sent  his  papers  on  Schiller  to  be  printed 
in  it ;  De  Quincey's  "  Confessions  of  an  English 
Opium-Eater"  appeared  in  its  pages;  and  the  es- 
says of  "  Elia  "  came  out  first  in  that  potent  period- 
ical; Landor,  Keats,  and  John  Bowring  contrib- 
uted to  it ;  and  to  have  printed  a  prose  or  poetical 
article  in  the  "  London  "  entitled  a  man  to  be  asked 
to  dine  out  anywhere  in  society  in  those  days.  In 
1821  the  proprietors  began  to  give  dinners  in 
Waterloo  Place  once  a  month  to  their  contribu- 
tors, who,  after  the  cloth  was  removed,  were  ex- 
pected to  talk  over  the  prospects  of  the  magazine, 
and  lay  out  the  contents  for  next  month.  Proc- 
ter described  to  me  the  authors  of  his  generation 
as  they  sat  round  the  old  "mahogany-tree"  of 
that  period.  "Very  social  and  expansive  hours 
they  passed  in  that  pleasant  room  half  a  century 
ago.  Thither  came  stalwart  Allan  Cunningham, 
with  his  Scotcli  face  shining  with  good-nature ; 
Charles  Lamb,  '  a  Diogenes  with  the  heart  of  a 
St.  John  ' ;  Hamilton  Reynolds,  whose  good  temper 
and  vivacity  were  like  condiments  at  a  feast ;  John 


60  OLD     ACQUAINTANCE. 

Clare,  the  peasant-poet,  simple  as  a  daisy;  Tom 
Hood,  young,  silent,  and  grave,  but  who  neverthe- 
less now  and  then  shot  out  a  pun  that  damaged 
the  shaking  sides  of  the  whole  company;  De  Quin- 
cey,  self-involved  and  courteous,  rolling  out  his 
periods  with  a  pomp  and  splendor  suited,  perhaps, 
to  a  high  Roman  festival ;  and  with  these  sons  of 
fame  gathered  certain  nameless  folk  whose  con- 
tributions to  the  great  '  London  '  are  now  under 
the  protection  of  that  tremendous  power  which  men 
call  Oblivion.'" 

It  was  a  vivid  pleasure  to  hear  Procter  describe 
Edward  Irving,  the  eccentric  preacher,  who  made 
such  a  deep  impression  on  the  spirit  of  his  time. 
He  is  now  dislimned'into  space,  but  he  was,  ac- 
cording to  all  his  thoughtful  contemporaries,  a 
"son  of  thunder,"  a  "giant  force  of  activity." 
Procter  fully  indorsed  all  that  Carlyle  has  so  nobly 
written  of  the  eloquent  man  who,  dying  at  forty- 
two,  has  stamped  his  strong  personal  vitality  on 
the  age  in  which  he  lived. 

Procter,  in  his  younger  days,  was  evidently  much 
impressed  by  that  clever  rascal  who,  under  the 
name  of  "Janus  Weathercock,"  scintillated  at 
intervals  in  the  old  "  London  Magazine."  "W'ain- 
Wright  —  for  that  was  his  real  name  —  was  so  brill- 
iant, he  made  friends  for  a  time  among  many  of  the 
first-class  contributors  to  that  once  famous  periodi- 
cal :    but  the  Ten   Commandments  ruined  all  his 


OLD     ACQUAIXTAXCE.  Gl 

prospects  lor  life.  A  murderer,  a  forger,  a  thief, 
—  ill  short,  a  sinner  in  general,  —  he  came  to 
grief  rather  early  in  his  wicked  career,  and  suffered 
penalties  of  the  law  accordingly,  but  never  to  the 
full  extent  of  his  remarkable  deserts.  I  have 
heard  Procter  describe  his  personal  appearance  as 
he  came  sparkling  into  the  room,  clad  in  undress 
military  costume.  His  smart  conversation  deceived 
those  about  him  into  the  belief  that  he  had  been  an 
officer  in  the  dragoons,  that  he  had  spent  a  lai'ge 
fortune,  and  now  condescended  to  take  a  part  in 
periodical  literature  with  the  culture  of  a  gentleman 
and  the  grace  oi  an  amateur.  How  this  vapid 
charlatan  in  a  braided  surtout  and  prismatic  neck- 
tie could  so  long  veil  his  real  character  from,  and 
retain  the  regard  of,  such  men  as  Procter  and  Tal- 
fourd  and  Coleridge  is  amazing.  Lamb  calls  him 
the  "kind  and  light-hearted  Janus,"  and  thought 
he  liked  him.  The  contributors  often  spoke  of  his 
guileless  nature  at  the  festal  monthly  board  of  the 
magazine,  and  no  one  dreamed  that  this  gay  and 
mock-smiling  London  cavalier  was  about  to  begin 
xa  career  so  foul  and  monstrous  that  the  annals  of 
crime  for  centuries  have  no  blacker  pages  inscribed 
on  them.  To  secure  the  means  of  luxurious  liv- 
ing  without  labor,  and  to  pamper  his  dandy  tastes, 
this  lounging,  lazy  Utteratear  resolved  to  become  a 
murderer  on  a  large  scale,  and  accompany  his  cruel 
poisonings  with  forgeries  whenever  they  were  most 


bi:  OLD     ACQL'AI^-TA^*CE. 

fouvenieut.  His  custom  for  years  was  to  effect 
policies  of  insurance  on  the  lives  of  his  relations, 
and  then  at  the  proper  time  administer  strychnine 
to  his  victims.  The  heart  sickens  at  the  recital  of 
his  hrutal  crimes.  On  the  life  of  a  beautiful  young 
girl  named  Abercrombie  this  fiendish  wretch  eifect- 
ed  an  insurance  at  various  offices  for  £  18.000  be- 
fore he  sent  her  to  her  account  with  the  rest  of  his 
poisoned  too-contiding  relatives.  So  many  heavily 
insured  ladies  dying  in  violent  convulsions  drew 
attention  to  the  gentleman  who  always  called  to 
collect  the  money.  But  why  this  consummate 
criminal  was  not  brought  to  justice  and  hung,  my 
Lord  Abinger  never  satisfactorily  divulged.  At 
last  this  polished  Sybarite,  who  boasted  that  he  al- 
ways di-ank  the  richest  Montepulciano,  who  could 
not  sit  long  in  a  room  that  was  not  garlanded  with 
flowers,  who  said  he  felt  lonely  in  an  apartment 
without  a  fine  cast  of  the  Venus  de'  Medici  in  it, — 
this  self-indulgent  voluptuaiy  at  last  committed 
several  forgt  ries  on  the  Bank  of  England,  and  the 
Old  Bailey  S(  ssions  of  July,  1837,  sentenced  him  to 
transportation  for  life,  "^^'hile  he  was  lying  in 
Newgate  prior  to  his  departure,  with  other  con- 
victs, to  New  South  ^Vales,  where  he  died,  Dickens 
went  with  a  former  acquaintance  of  the  prisoner  to 
see  him.  They  found  him  still  possessed  with  a 
morbid  self-esteem  and  a  poor  and  empty  vanity. 
All  other  feelings  and  interests  were  overwhelmed 


'-/J>-  \ 


OLD     ACQUAINTANCE.  65 

Ly  an  excessive  idolatry  of  self,  and  he  claimed  (I 
now  quote  his  own  words  to  Dickens)  a  soul  whose 
nutriment  is  love,  and  its  offspring  art,  music,  di- 
vine song,  and  still  holier  philosophy.  To  the  last 
this  super-refined  creature  seemed  undisturbed  by 
remorse.  What  place  can  we  fancy  for  such  a  rep- 
tile, and  what  do  we  learn  from  such  a  career? 
Talfom-d  has  so  wisely  summed  up  the  whole  case 
for  us  that  I  leave  the  dark  tragedy  with  the  re- 
cital of  this  solemn  sentence  from  a  paper  on  the 
culprit  in  the  "  Final  Memorials  of  Charles  Lamb  "  : 
"  Wainwright's  vanity,  nurtured  by  selfishness  and 
unchecked  by  religion,  became  a  disease,  amonnting 
perhaps  to  monomania,  and  yielding  one  1  ssoii  to 
repay  the  world  for  his  existence,  viz.  that  there 
is  no  state  of  the  soul  so  dangerous  as  that  in  which 
the  vices  of  the  sensualist  are  envenomed  by  the 
grovelling  intellect  of  the  scorner." 

One  of  the  men  best  worth  meeting  in  London, 
under  any  circumstances,  was  Leigh  Hunt,  but  it 
was  a  special  boon  to  find  him  and  Procter  to- 
gether. I  remember  a  day  in  the  summer  of  1859 
when  Procter  had  a  party  of  friends  at  dinner  to 
meet  Hawthorne,  who  was  then  on  a  brief  visit  to 
London.     Among  the  guests  were  the  Countess  of 

,  Kinglake,  the  author  of  "  Eothen,"  Charles 

Sumner,  then  on  his  way  to  Paris,  and  Leigh  Hunt, 
the  mercurial  qualities  of  whose  blood  were  even 
then  perceptible  in  his  manner. 


G6  OLD      ACQUAIXTANCE. 

Adelaide  Procter  did  not  reach  tome  in  season  to 
begin  the  dinner  vrith  us,  but  she  came  later  in  the 
evening,  and  sat  for  some  time  in  earnest  talk  with 
Hawthorne.  It  was  a  "  goodly  companie,"  long  to 
be  remembered.  Hunt  and  Procter  were  in  a  mood 
for  gossip  over  the  ruddy  port.  As  the  twilight 
deepened  around  the  table,  which  was  exquisitely 
decorated  with  flowers,  the  author  of  "  Rimini  " 
recalled  to  Procter's  recollection  other  memorable 
tables  where  they  used  to  meet  in  vanished  days 
with  Lamb,  Coleridge,  and  others  of  their  set  long 
since  passed  away.  As  they  talked  on  in  rather 
low  tones,  I  saw  the  two  old  poets  take  hands  more 
than  once  at  the  mention  of  dead  and  beloved 
names.  I  recollect  they  had  a  good  deal  of  fine 
talk  over  the  great  singers  whose  voices  had  de- 
lighted them  in  bygone  days  ;  speaking  with  rap- 
ture of  Pasta,  whose  tones  in  opera  they  thought 
incomparably  the  grandest  musical  utterances  they 
had  ever  heard.     Procter's  tribute  in  verse  to  this 

'•  Queen  and  wonder  of  the  enchanted  world  of  sound  " 

is  one  of  his  best  lyrics,  and  never  was  singer  more 
divinely  complimented  by  poet.  At  the  dinner  I 
am  describing  he  declared  that  she  walked  on  the 
stage  like  an  empress.  "  And  when  she  sang,"  said 
he,  "  I  held  my  breath."  Leigh  Hunt,  in  one  of  his 
letters  to  Procter  in  1831,  says  :  "  As  to  Pasta,  I 
love  her,  for  she  makes  the  ground  firm  under  my 
feet,  and  the  skv  blue  over  mv  head." 


OLD     ACQUAIXTAXCE.  K)  t 

T  cannot  remember  all  the  good  things  I  heard 
that  day,  but  some  of  them  live  in  my  recollection 
still.  Hunt  quoted  Hartley  Coleridge,  who  said, 
"  No  boy  ever  imagined  himself  a  poet  while  he 
was  reading  Shakespeare  or  INlilton."  And  speaking 
of  Landor's  oaths,  he  said,  "  They  are  so  rich,  they 
are  really  nutritious."  Talking  of  criticism,  he  said 
he  did  not  believe  in  spiteful  imps,  but  in  kindly 
elves  who  would  "nod  to  him  and  do  him  courte- 
sies." He  laughed  at  Bishop  Berkely's  attempt  to 
destroy  the  world  in  one  octavo  volume.  His  doc- 
trine to  mankind  always  was,  "  Enlarge  your  tastes, 
that  you  may  enlarge  your  hearts."  He  believed  in 
reversing  original  propensities  by  education,  —  as 
Spallanzani  brought  up  eagles  on  bread  and  milk, 
and  fed  doves  on  raw  meat.  "  Don't  let  us  demand 
too  much  of  human  nature,"  was  a  line  in  his  creed  ; 
and  he  believed  in  Hood's  advice,  that  gentleness  in 
a  case  of  wrong  direction  is  always  better  than  vitu- 
peration. 

"  Mirt  light,  and  by  degrees,  sliould  be  tlie  plan 
To  cure  the  dark  and  erring  mind  ; 
But  wlvo  would  rush  at  ai  l)enigbted  man 
And  give  liim  two  black  eyes  for  being  blind  ?  " 

I  recollect  there  was  mucli  converse  that  day  on 
the  love  of  reading  in  old  age,  and  Leigh  Hunt  ob- 
served that  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  seeing  Mr.  Fox 
busy  in  the  library  at  Houghton,  said  to  him  : 
"  And  vou  can  read  !     Ah,  how  I  envv  vou !     I  to- 


68  OLD     ACQUAIXTAXrE. 

tally  neglected  the  hahit  of  reading  when  I  was 
young,  and  now  in  my  old  age  I  cannot  read  a 
single  page,"  Hunt  himself  was  a  man  who  could 
be  "  penetrated  by  a  book."  It  was  inspiring  to 
hear  him  dilate  over  "  Plutarch's  Morals,"  and 
quote  passages  from  that  delightful  essay  on  "The 
Tranquillity  of  the  Soul."  He  had  such  reverence 
for  the  wisdom  folded  up  on  his  libraiy  shelves,  he 
declared  that  the  very  penisal  of  the  harks  nf  h'ls 
hooks  \\a%  "a  discipline  of  humanity."  ^Vhenever 
and  wherever  T  met  this  charming  person,  I  learned 
a  lesson  of  gentleness  and  patience  ;  for,  steeped  to 
the  lips  in  poverty  as  he  was,  he  was  ever  the  most 
cheerful,  the  most  genial  companion  and  friend. 
He  never  left  his  good-nature  outside  the  family 
circle,  as  a  ^Mussulman  leaves  his  slippers  outside  a 
mosque,  but  he  always  brought  a  smiling  face  into 

the  house  with   him.     T A ,   whose  fine 

floating  wit  has  never  yet  quite  condensed  itself  into 
a  star,  said  one  day  of  a  Boston  man  that  he  was 
"east-wind  made  flesh."  Leigh  Hunt  was  exactly 
the  opposite  of  this ;  he  was  compact  of  all  the 
spicy  breezes  that  blow.  In  his  bare  cottage  at 
Hammersmith  the  temperament  of  his  fine  spirit 
beaped  up  such  riches  of  fancy  that  kings,  if  wise 
ones,  might  envy  his  magic  power.  « 

"  Onward  in  faiili,  and  leave  the  rest  to  Heaven," 

was  a  line  he  often  quoted.  There  was  about  him 
such  a  modest  fortitude  in  want  and  poverty,  such 


OLD     ACQUAIXTAXCE.  69 

an  inborn  mental  superiority  to  low  and  uncomfort- 
able circumstances,  that  he  rose  without  effort  into 
a  region  encompassed  with  felicities,  untroubled  by 
a  care  or  sorrow.  He  always  reminded  me  of  that 
favorite  child  of  the  genii  who  carried  an  amulet  in 
his  bosom  by  which  all  the  gold  and  jewels  of  the 
Sultan's  halls  were  no  sooner  beheld  than  they  be- 
came his  own.  If  he  sat  down  companionless  to  a 
solitary  chop,  his  imagination  transformed  it  straight- 
way into  a  line  shoulder  of  mutton.  When  he 
looked  out  of  his  dingy  old  windows  on  the  four 
bleak  elms  in  front  of  his  dwelling,  he  saw,  or 
thought  he  saw,  a  vast  forest,  and  he  could  hear  in 
the  note  of  one  poor  sparrow  even  the  silvery  voices 
of  a  hundred  nightingales.  Such  a  man  might 
often  be  cold  and  hungry,  but  he  had  the  wit  never 
to  be  aware  of  it. 

Hunt's  love  for  Procter  was  deep  and  tender,  and 
in  one  of  his  notes  to  me  he  says,  referring  to  the 
meeting  my  memory  has  been  trying  to  describe,  "  I 
have  reasons  for  liking  our  dear  friend  Procter's 
wine  beyond  what  you  saw  when  we  dined  together 
at  his  table  the   other  day."     Procter  prefixed  a 

memoir  of  the  life  and  writings  of  Ben  Jonson  to 

•ir  •- 

the  great  dramatist's  works  printed  by  Moxon  in 

1838.     I  happen  to  be  the  lucky  owner  of  a  copy 

of  this  edition  that  once  belonged  to  Leigh  Hunt, 

who  has  enriched  it  and  perfumed  the  pages,  as  it 

were,  by  his  annotations.     The  memoir  abounds  in 


70  OLD     ACQUAINTANCE. 

felicities  of  expression,  and  is  the  best  brief  chron- 
icle yet  made  of  rare  Ben  and  his  poetry.  Leigh 
Hunt  has  filled  the  margins  with  his  own  neat 
handwriting,  and  as  I  turn  over  the  leaves,  thus 
companioned,  I  seem  to  meet  those  two  loving 
brothers  in  modern  song,  and  have  again  the  bene- 
fit of  their  sweet  society,  —  a  society  redolent  of 

"  The  love  of  learning,  the  sequestered  nooks, 
And  all  the  sweet  serenity  of  books." 

I  shall  not  soon  forget  the  first  morning  I  walked 
with  Procter  and  Kenyon  to  the  famous  house  No. 
22  St.  James  Place,  overlooking  the  Green  Park, 
to  a  break  fast  with  Samuel  Rogers.  Mixed  up  with 
this  matutinal  rite  was  much  that  belongs  to  the 
modern  literary  and  , political  history  of  England. 
Fox,  Burke,  Talleyrand,  Grattan,  "Walter  Scott,  and 
many  other  great  ones  have  sat  there  and  held  con- 
verse on  divers  matters  with  the  banker-poet.  For 
more  than  half  a  century  the  Avits  and  the  wise  men 
honored  that  unpretending  mansion  with  their  pres- 
ence. On  my  way  thither  for  the  first  time  my 
companions  related  anecdote  after  anecdote  of  the 
'"ancient  bard,"  as  they  called  our  host,  telling  me 
also  how  all  his  life  long  the  poet  of  ^lemory  had 
been  giving  substantial  aid  to  poor  authors  ;  how  he 
had  befriended  Sheridan,  and  how  good  he  had  been 
to  Campbell  in  his  sorest  needs.  Intellectual  or 
artistic  excellence  was  a  sure  passport  to  his  sa/on, 
and  his  door  never  turned  on  reluctant  hinges  to 


OLD     ACQUAIXTAXCE.  id 

admit  the  unfriended  man  of  letters  who  needed  his 
aid  and  counsel. 

"We  arrived  in  quite  an  expectant  mood,  to  find 
our  host  already  seated  at  the  head  of  his  table,  and 
his  good  man  Edmund  standing  behind  his  chair. 
As  we  entered  the  room,  and  I  saw  Rogers  sitting 
there  so  venerable  and  strange,  I  was  reminded  of 
that  line  of  "Wordsworth's, 

"  The  oldest  man  he  seemed  that  ever  wore  gray  hair." 

But  old  as  he  was,  he  seemed  full  of  verve,  vivacity, 
and  decision.  Knowing  his  homage  for  Ben  Frank- 
lin, I  had  brought  to  him  as  a  gift  from  America 
an  old  volume  issued  by  the  patriot  printer  in  1741. 
He  was  delighted  with  my  little  present,  and  began 
at  once  to  say  how  much  he  thought  of  Franklin's 
prose.  He  considered  the  style  admirable,  and  de- 
clared that  it  might  be  studied  now  for  improvement 
in  the  art  of  composition.  One  of  the  guests  that 
morning  was  the  Rev.  Alexander  Dyce.  the  scholarly 
editor  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  and  he  very  soon 
drew  Rogers  out  on  the  subject  of  Warren  Hast- 
ings's trial.  It  seemed  ghostly  enough  to  hear  that 
famous  event  depicted  by  one  who  sat  in  the  great 
hall  of  "William  Rufus  ;  who  day  after  day  had 
looked  on  and  listened  to  the  eloquence  of  Fox 
and  Sheridan ;  who  had  heard  Edmund  Burke 
raise  his  voice  till  the  old  arches  of  Irish  oak  re- 
sounded, and  impeach  "Warren   Hastings,  "in  the 


/  4  OLD     ACQUAINTANCE. 

name  of  both  sexes,  in  the  name  of  every  age,  in 
the  name  of  every  rank,  as  the  common  enemy  and 
oppressor  of  all."  It  thrilled  me  to  hear  Rogers 
say,  "As  I  walked  up  Parliament  Street  with  ^Irs. 
Siddons,  after  hearing  Sheridan's  great  speech,  we 
both  agreed  that  never  before  could  human  lips 
have  uttered  more  eloquent  words."  That  morning 
Rogers  described  to  us  the  appearance  of  Grattan  as 
he  first  saw  and  heard  him  when  he  made  his  first 
speech  in  Parliament.  "  Some  of  us  were  inclined 
to  laugh,"  said  he,  "  at  the  orator's  Irish  brogue 
when  he  began  his  speech  that  day,  but  after  he 
had  been  on  his  legs  five  minutes  nobody  dared  to 
laugh  any  more."  Then  followed  personal  anec- 
dotes of  Madame  De  Stael,  the  Duke  of  "Wellington, 
"Walter  Scott,  Tom  Moore,  and  Sydney  Smith,  all 
exquisitely  told.  Both  our  host  and  his  friend 
Procter  had  known  or  entertained  most  of  the 
celebrities  of  their  day.  Procter  soon  led  the 
conversation  up  to  matters  connected  with  the 
stage,  and  thinking  of  John  Kemble  and  Edmund 
Kean,  I  ventured  to  ask  Rogers  who  of  all  the 
great  actors  he  had  seen  bore  away  the  palm. 
"  I  have  looked  upon  a  magnificent  procession  of 
them,"  he  said,  "  in  my  time,  and  I  never  saw 
any  one  superior  to  Lavid  Garrick."  He  then 
repeated  Hannah  More's  couplet  on  receiving  as 
a  gift  from  Mrs.  Garrick  the  shoe-buckles  which 
once  belonged  to  the  great  actor  :  — 


OLD     ACQU,AIXTA^CE.  75 

"  Thy  buckles,  0  Garrick,  another  may  use, 
But  none  shall  be  found  who  can  tread  in  thy  shoes." 

We  applaiided  his  memory  and  his  manner  of  recit- 
ing the  lines,  which  seemed  to  please  him.  "  How 
much  can  sometimes  be  put  into  an  epigram !  "  he 
said  to  Procter,  and  asked  him  if  he  remembered 
the  lines  about  Earl  Grey  and  the  Kaffir  war. 
Procter  did  not  recall  them,  and  Rogers  set  off 
again  :  — 

"  A  dispute  has  arisen  of  late  at  tlie  Cape, 
As  touching  the  devil,  his  color  and  shape  ; 
While  some  folks  contend  that  the  devil  is  white, 
The  others  aver  that  he  's  black  as  midnight ; 
But  now  't  is  decided  quite  right  in  this  way. 
And  all  are  convinced  that  the  devil  is  Grey." 

We  asked  him  if  he  remembered  the  theatrical 
excitement  in  London  when  Garrick  and  his  trouble- 
some contemporary,  Barry,  were  playing  King  Lear 
at  rival  houses,  and  dividing  the  final  opinion  of  the 
critics.  "  Yes,"  said  he,  "  perfectly.  T  saw  both 
those  wonderful  actors,  and  fully  agreed  at  the  time 
with  the  admirable  epigram  that  ran  like  wildfire 
into  every  nook  and  corner  of  society."  "  Did  the 
epigram  still  live  in  his  memory  ?  "  we  asked.  The 
old  man  seemed  looking  across  the  misty  valley  of 
time  for  a  few  moments,  and  then  gave  it  without  a 
pause :  '■ — 

"  The  town  have  chosen  different  ways 

To  praise  their  different  Lears  ; 
To  Barry  they  gi\e  loud  applause, 

To  Garrick  only  tears." 


to  OLD     ACQL'AINTAXCE. 

"  A  king '  ay,  every  inch  a  king, 
Surli  Barry  doth  appear  -. 
But  Garrick  's  quite  another  th'ng, — 
He  's  everj-  inch  King  Lear .'  " 

AmonsT  other  tlimsrs  which  Rogers  told  us  that 
morning,  I  remember  he  had  much  to  say  of 
Byron's  forgetfulness  as  to  all  manner  of  things. 
As  an  endence  of  his  inaccuracy,  Rogers  related 
how  the  noble  bard  had  once  quoted  to  him  some 
lines  on  Venice  as  Southey's  "  which  he  wanted  me 
to  admire,"  said  Rogers  ;  "  and  as  I  wrote  them 
myself,  I  had  no  hesitation  in  doing  so.  The  lines 
are  in  my  poem  on  Italy,  and  begin, 

"  'There  is  a  glorious  city  in  the  sea.'" 
Samuel  Lawrence  had  recently  painted  in  oils  a 
portrait  of  Rogers,  and  we  asked  to  see  it ;  so  Ed- 
mund was  sent  up  stairs  to  get  it,  and  bring  it  to 
the  table.  Rogers  himself  wished  to  compare  it 
with  his  own  face,  and  had  a  looking-glass  held 
before  him.  "\\*e  sat  by  in  silence  as  he  regarded 
the  picture  attentively,  and  waited  for  his  criticism. 

Soon  he  burst  out  with,  "  Is  my  nose  so  d y 

sharp  as  th.it  r  "  "SVe  all  exclaimed,  "  No  I  no  ! 
the  artist  is  at  fault  there,  sir."  "  I  thought  so," 
he  cried;  "he  has  painted  the  face  of  a  dead  man, 
d — n  him  I  "  Some  one  said,  "  The  portrait  is  too 
hard."  "I  won't  be  painted  as  a  hard  man,"  re- 
joined Rogers.  "  I  am  not  a  hard  man,  am  I, 
Procter?"  asked  the  old  poet.     Procter  deprecated 


OLD     ACQUAINTANCE.  tJ 

with  energy  such  an  idea  as  that.  Looking  at 
the  portrait  again,  Rogers  said,  with  great  feeling, 
"  Children  would  run  away  from  that  face,  and  they 
never  ran  away  from  me  !  "  Notwithstanding  all 
he  had  to  say  against  the  poi'trait,  I  thought  it  a 
wonderful  likeness,  and  a  painting  of  great  value. 
Moxon,  the  publisher,  who  was  present,  asked  for  a 
certain  portfolio  of  engraved  heads  which  had  been 
made  from  time  to  time  of  Rogers,  and  this  was 
brcught  and  opened  for  our  examination  of  its  con- 
tents. Rogers  insisted  upon  looking  over  the  por- 
traits, and  he  amused  us  by  his  cutting  comments 
on  each  one  as  it  came  out  of  the  portfolio. 
"  This,"  said  he,  holding  one  up,  "  is  the  head 
of  a  cunning  fellow,  and  this  the  face  of  a  de- 
bauched clergyman,  and  this  the  visage  of  a  shame- 
less drunkard !  "  After  a  comic  discussion  of  the 
pictures  of  himself,  which  went  on  for  half  an  hour, 
he  said,  "  It  is  time  to  change  the  topic,  and  set 
aside  the  little  man  for  a  very  great  one.  Bring 
me  my  collection  of  Washington  portraits."  These 
were  brought  in,  and  he  had  much  to  say  of  Ameri- 
can matters.  He  remembered  being  told,  when  a 
boy,  by  his  father  one  day,  that  "  a  fight  had  recently 
occurred  at  a  place  called  Bunker  Hill,  in  America." 
He  then  inquired  about  "Webster  and  the  monument. 
He  had  met  "Webster  in  England,  and  greatly  ad- 
mired him.  Now  and  then  his  memory  was  at  fault, 
and  he  spoke  occasionally  of  events  as  still  exist- 


«b  OLD     ACQUAINTANCE. 

ing  which  had  happened  half  a  century  before.  I 
remember  what  a  shock  it  gave  me  when  he  asked 
me  if  Alexander  Hamilton  had  printed  any  new 
pamphlets  lately,  and  begged  me  to  send  him  any- 
thing that  distinguished  man  might  publish  after  I 
got  home  to  America. 

I  recollect  how  delighted  I  was  when  Rogers 
sent  me  an  invitation  the  second  time  to  breakfast 
with  him.  On  that  occasion  the  poet  spoke  of  be- 
ing in  Paris  on  a  pleasure-tour  with  Daniel  "Web- 
ster, and  he  grew  eloquent  over  the  great  American 
orator's  genius.  He  also  referred  with  enthusiasm 
to  Bryant's  poetry,  and  quoted  with  deep  feeling 
the  first  three  verses  of  ';  The  Future  Life."  ^Vhen 
he  pronounced  the  lines  :  — 

"  My  name  on  earth  was  ever  in  tliy  prayer, 
And  must  thou  never  utter  it  in  lieaveu  ?  " 

his  voice  trembled,  and  he  faltered  out,  "  I  cannot 
go  on :  there  is  something  in  that  poem  which 
breaks  me  down,  and  I  must  never  try  again  to  re- 
cite verses  so  fuU  of  tenderness  and  undying  love." 

For  Longfellow's  poems,  then  just  published  in 
England,  he  expressed  the  warmest  admiration,  and 
thought  the  author  of  "  Voices  of  the  Night  "  one 
of  the  most  perfect  artists  in  English  verse  who  had 
ever  lived. 

Rogers's  reminiscences  of  Holland  House  that 
morning  were  a  series  of  delightful  pictures  painted 


OLD     ACQUAINT  A  XCE.  79 

by  an  artist  who  left  out  none  of  the  salient  fea- 
tures, but  gave  to  everything  he  touched  a  graphic 
reality.  In  his  narrations  the  eloquent  men,  the 
fine  ladies,  he  had  seen  there  assembled  again  around 
their  noble  host  and  hostess,  and  one  listened  in  the 
pleasant  breakfast-room  in  St.  James  Place  to  the 
wit  and  wisdom  of  that  brilliant  company  which 
met  fifty  years  ago  in  the  great  salon  of  that  princely 
mansion,  which  will  always  be  famous  in  the  literary 
and  political  history  of  England. 

Rogers  talked  that  morning  with  inimitable 
finish  and  grace  of  expression.  A  light  seemed  to 
play  over  his  faded  features  when  he  recalled  some 
happy  past  experience,  and  his  eye  would  sometimes 
fill  as  he  glanced  back  among  his  kindred,  all  now 
dead  save  one,  his  sister,  who  also  lived  to  a  great 
age.  His  head  was  very  fine,  and  I  never  could 
quite  understand  the  satirical  sayings  about  his  per- 
sonal appearance  which  have  crept  into  the  literary 
gossip  of  his  time.  He  was  by  no  means  the  viva- 
cious spectre  some  of  his  contemporaries  have  rep^ 
resented  him,  and  I  never  thought  of  connecting  him 
with  that  terrible  line  in  "  The  Mirror  of  Magis- 
trates," — 

"His  -withered  fist  still  striking  at  Death's  door." 

His  dome  of  brain  was  one  of  the  amplest  and  most 
perfectly  shaped  I  ever  saw,  and  his  countenance 
was  very  far  from  unpleasant.     His  faculties  to  en- 


80  OLD     ACQUAINTANCE. 

joy  had  not  perished  with  age.  He  certainly  looked 
like  a  well-seasoned  author,  but  not  dropping  to 
pieces  yet.  His  turn  of  thought  was  characteristic, 
and  in  the  main  just,  for  he  loved  the  best,  and  was 
naturally  impatient  of  what  was  low  and  mean  in 
conduct  and  intellect.  He  had  always  lived  in  an 
atmosphere  of  art,  and  his  reminiscences  of  paint- 
ers and  sculptors  were  never  wearisome  or  dull.  He 
had  a  store  of  pleasant  anecdotes  of  Chantrey,  whom 
he  had  employed  as  a  wood-carver  long  before  he 
became  a  modeller  in  clay  ;  and  he  had  also  much  to 
tell  us  of  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  whose  lectures  he 
had  attended,  and  whose  studio-talk  had  been  fa- 
miliar to  him  while  he  was  a  young  man  and  study- 
ing art  himself  as  att  amateur.  It  was  impossible 
almost  to  make  Rogers  seem  a  real  being  as  we  used 
to  surround  his  table  during  those  mornings  and 
sometimes  deep  into  the  afternoons.  AVe  were  lis- 
tening to  one  who  had  talked  with  Boswell  about 
Dr.  Johnson  ;  who  had  sat  hours  with  Mrs.  Piozzi  ; 
who  read  the  "  Vicar  of  Wakefield  "  the  day  it  was 
published  ;  who  had  heard  Haydn,  the  composer, 
playing  at  a  concert,  "dressed  out  Avith  a  sword  "  ; 
who  had  listened  to  Talleyrand's  best  sayings  from 
his  own  lips  ;  who  had  seen  John  "Wesley  lying 
dead  in  his  coffin,  "  an  old  man,  with  the  coimte- 
nance  of  a  little  child  "  ;  who  had  been  with  Beck- 
ford  at  Fonthill ;  who  had  seen  Porson  slink  back 
into  the  dining-room  after  the  company  had  left 


OLD     ACQUAINTANCE.  81 

it  and  drain  what  was  left  in  the  wineglasses ;  who 
had  crossed  the  Apennines  with  Byron  ;  who  had 
seen  Beau  Nash  in  the  height  of  his  career  dancing 
minuets  at  Bath ;  who  had  known  Lady  Hamilton 
in  her  days  of  beauty,  and  seen  her  often  with  Lord 
Nelson  ;  who  was  in  Fox's  room  when  that  great 
man  lay  dying ;  and  who  could  describe  Pitt  from 
personal  observation,  speaking  always  as  if  his 
mouth  was  "  full  of  worsted."  It  was  unreal  as  a 
dream  to  sit  there  in  St.  James  Place  and  hear  that 
old  man  talk  by  the  hour  of  what  one  had  been 
reading  about  all  one  's  life.  One  thing,  I  must 
confess,  somewhat  shocked  me,  —  I  was  not  pre- 
pared for  the  feeble  manner  in  which  some  of  Rog- 
ers's best  stories  were  received  by  the  gentlemen 
who  had  gathered  at  his  table  on  those  Tuesday 
mornings.  But  when  Procter  told  me  in  explana- 
tion afterward  that  they  had  all  "  heard  the  same 
anecdotes  every  week,  perhaps,  for  half  a  century 
from  the  same  lips,"  I  no  longer  wondered  at  the 
seeming  apathy  I  had  witnessed.  It  was  a  great 
treat  to  me,  however,  the  talk  I  heard  at  Rogers's 
hospitable  table,  and  my  three  visits  there  cannot 
be  erased  from  the  pleasantest  tablets  of  memory, 
'^here  is  only  one  regret  connected  with  them,  but 
that  loss  still  haunts  me.  On  one  of  those  memo- 
rable mornings  I  was  obliged  to  leave  earlier  than 
the  rest  of  the  company  on  account  of  an  engage- 
ment out  of  London,  and  Lady  Beecher  (formerly 


82  OLD     ACQUAIXTAXCE. 

Miss  0"Xeil),  the  great  actress  of  other  days,  came 
in  and  read  an  hour  to  the  old  poet  and  his  guests. 
Procter  told  me  afterward  that  among  other  things 
she  read,  at^Rogers's  request,  the  14th  chapter  of 
Isaiah,  and  that  her  voice  and  manner  seemed  like 
inspiration. 

Seeing  and  talking  with  Rogers  was,  indeed,  like 
living  in  the  past :  and  one  may  imagine  how  weii'd 
it  seemed  to  a  raw  Yankee  youth,  thus  facing  the 
man  who  might  have  shaken  hands  with  Dr.  John- 
son. I  ventured  to  ask  him  one  day  if  he  had 
ever  seen  the  doctor.  "  No,"  said  he,  "  but  I  went 
down  to  Bolt  Court  in  1782  with  the  intention  of 
making  Dr.  Johnson's  acquaintance.  I  raised  the 
knocker  tremblingly,  and  hearing  the  shuffling  foot- 
steps  as  of  an  old  man  in  the  entry,  my  heart  failed 
me,  and  I  put  down  the  knocker  softly  again,  and 
crept  back  into  Fleet  Street  without  seeing  the 
\ision  I  was  not  bold  enough  to  encounter."  I 
thought  it  was  something  to  have  heard  the  foot- 
steps of  old  Sam  Johnson  stirring  about  in  that 
ancient  entry,  and  for  my  own  part  I  was  glad  to 
look  upon  the  man  whose  eai-s  had  been  so  strangely 
privileged. 

Rogers  drew  about  him  all  the  musical  as  well  as 
the  literary  talent  of  London.  Grisi  and  Jenny  I.ind 
often  came  of  a  morning  to  sing  their  best  arias  to 
him  when  he  became  too  old  to  attend  the  opera ; 
and  both  Adelaide  and  Fannv  Kemble  brought  to 


OLD     ACQUAINTANCE.  85 

him  frequently  the  rich  tributes  of  their  genius  in 
art. 

It  was  my  good  fortune,  through  the  friendship 
of  Procter,  to  make  the  acquaintance,  at  Rogers's 
table,  of  Leslie,  the  artist,  - —  a  warm  friend  of  the 
old  poet,  —  and  to  be  taken  round  by  him  and  shown 
all  the  principal  private  galleries  in  London.  He 
first  drew  my  attention  to  the  pictures  by  Con- 
stable, and  pointed  out  their  quiet  beauty  to  my  un- 
educated eye,  thus  instructing  me  to  hate  all  those 
intemperate  landscapes  and  lurid  compositions  which 
abound  in  the  shambles  of  modern  art.  In  the 
company  of  Leslie  I  saw  my  first  Titians  and  Van- 
dycks,  and  felt,  as  Northcote  says,  on  my  good  be- 
havior in  the  presence  of  portraits  so  lifelike  and 
inspiring.  It  was  Leslie  who  inoculated  me  with 
a  love  of  Gainsborough,  before  whose  perfect  pic- 
tures a  spectator  involuntarily  raises  his  hat  and 
stands  uncovered.  (And  just  here  let  me  advise 
every  art  lover  who  goes  to  England  to  visit  the 
little  Dulwich  Gallery,  only  a  few  miles  from  Lon- 
don, and  there  to  spend  an  hour  or  two  among 
the  exquisite  Gainsboroughs.  No  small  collection 
in  Europe  is  better  worth  a  visit,  and  the  place 
itself  in  summer-time  is  enchanting  with  greenery.) 

As  Rogers's  dining-room  abounded  in  only  first- 
rate  works  of  art,  Leslie  used  to  take  round  the 
guests  and  make  us  admire  the  Raphaels  and  Cor- 
reggios.     Inserted  in  the  walls  on  each  side  of  the 


86  OLD     ACQUAIXTAXCE. 

mantel-piece,  like  tiles,  were  several  of  Turner's 
original  oil  and  water-color  drawings,  which  that 
supreme  artist  had  designed  to  illustrate  Rogers's 
"  Poems  "  and  "  Italy."  Long  before  Ruskin  made 
those  sketches  world-famous  in  his  "  Modern  Paint- 
ers," I  have  heard  Leslie  point  out  their  beauties 
with  as  fine  an  enthusiasm.  He  used  to  say  that 
they  purified  the  whole  atmosphere  round  St,  James 
Place ! 

Procter  had  a  genuine  regard  for  Count  d'Orsay, 
and  he  pointed  him  out  to  me  one  day  sitting  in 
the  window  of  his  club,  near  Gore  House,  looking 
out  on  Piccadilly.  The  count  seemed  a  little  past 
his  prime,  but  was  still  the  handsomest  man  in 
London.  Procter  described  him  as  a  brilliant  per- 
son, of  special  ability,  and  by  no  means  a  mer 
dandy. 

I  first  saw  Procter's  friend,  Jolin  Forster,  the  bi- 
ographer of  Goldsmith  and  Dickens,  in  his  pleasant 
rooms.  No.  58  Lincoln's  lun  Fields.  He  was  then 
in  his  prime,  and  looked  brimful  of  energy.  His  age 
might  have  been  forty,  or  a  trifle  onward  from  that 
mile-stone,  and  his  whole  manner  annouaced  a  de- 
termination to  assert  that  nobody  need  prompt  him. 
His  voice  rang  loud  and  clear,  up  stairs  and  down, 
everywhere  throughout  his  premises.  When  he 
walked  over  the  uncarpeted  floor,  you  heard  him 
walk,  and  he  meant  you  should.  "When  he  spoke, 
nobody   required  an   ear-trumpet ;    the  deaf  never 


OLD     ACQUAINTANCE.  Q\f 

lost  a  sj^Uable  of  his  manly  utterances.  Procter 
and  he  were  in  the  same  Commission,  and  were  on 
excellent  temis,the  younger  officer  always  regarding 
the  elder  with  a  kind  of  leonine  deference. 

It  was  to  John  Forster  these  charming  lines  were 
addressed  by  Barry  Cornwall,  when  the  poet  sent 
his  old  friend  a  present  of  Shakespeare's  Works.  A 
more  exquisite  compliment  was  never  conveyed  in 
verse  so  modest  and  so  perfect  in  simple  grace  :  — 

"  I  do  not  know  a  man  who  better  reads 
Or  weighs  tlie  great  thoughts  of  the  book  I  send,  — 
Better  than  he  whom  I  have  called  my  friend 
For  twenty  years  and  upwards.     He  who  feeds 
Upon  Shakesperian  pastures  never  needs 
The  humbler  food  which  springs  from  plains  below  ; 
Yet  may  he  love  the  little  flowers  that  blow, 
And  him  excuse  who  for  their  beauty  pleads. 

"  Take  then  my  Shakespeare  to  some  sylvan  nook ; 
And  pray  thee,  in  the  name  of  Days  of  old. 
Good-will  and  friendship,  never  bought  or  sold. 
Give  me  assurance  thou  wilt  always  look 
With  kindness  still  on  Spirits  of  humbler  mould; 
Kept  firm  by  resting  on  that  wondrous  book, 
Wherein  the  Dream  of  Life  is  all  unrolled." 

Forster's  library  was  filled  with  treasures,  and  he 
brought  to  the  dinner-table,  the  day  I  was  first  with 
him,  such  rare  and  costly  manuscripts  and  annotated 
volumes  to  show  us,  that  one's  appetite  for  "  made 
dishes  "  was  quite  taken  away.  The  excellent  lady 
whom  he  afterward  married  was  one  of  the  guests. 


90  OLD     ACQUAINTANCE. 

and  among  the  gentlemen  present  I  remember  the 
brilliant  author  of  "  The  Bachelor  of  the  Albany,"  a 
book  that  was  then  the  Novel  sensation  in  London. 
Forster  flew  from  one  topic  to  another  with  admi- 
rable skill,  and  entertained  us  with  anecdotes  of 
"Wellington  and  Rogers,  gilding  the  time  with  capi- 
tal imitations  of  his  celebrated  contemporaries  in 
literature  and  on  the  stage.  A  touch  about  Ed- 
mund Kean  made  us  all  start  from  our  chairs  and 
demand  a  mimetic  repetition.  Forster  must  have 
been  an  excellent  private  actor,  for  he  had  power 
and  skill  quite  exceptional  in  that  way.  His  force 
carried  him  along  wherever  he  chose  to  go,  and 
when  he  played  "  Kitely,"  his  ability  must  have 
been  strikingly  appai'ent.  After  his  marriage,  and 
when  he  removed  from  Lincoln's  Inn  to  his  tine 
residence  at  "  Palace-Gate  House,"  he  gave  fre- 
quent readings,  evincing  remarkable  natural  and  ac- 
quired talents.  For  Dickens  he  had  a  love  amount- 
ing to  jealousy.  He  never  quite  relished  anybody 
else  whom  the  great  novelist  had  a  fondness  for, 
and  I  have  heard  droll  stories  touching  this  weak- 
ness. For  Professor  Felton  he  had  unbounded  re- 
gard, which  had  grown  up  by  correspondence  and 
through  report  from  Dickens.  He  had  never  met 
Felton,  and  when  the  professor  arrived  in  London, 
Dickens,  with  his  love  of  fun,  arranged  a  bit  of 
cajolery,  which  was  never  quite  forgotten,  though 
wholly   forgiven.      Knowing   how   highly   Forster 


OLD     ACQUAIXTAXCE.  91 

esteemed  Feltoii,  through  his  wintings  and  his 
letters,  Dickens  resolved  to  take  Felton  at  once  to 
Forster's  house  and  inti-oduce  him  as  Professor 
Stowe,  the  port  of  both  these  gentlemen  being 
pretty  nearly  equal.  The  Stowes  were  then  in 
England  on  their  triumphant  tour,  and  this  made 
the  attempt  at  deception  an  easy  one.  So,  Felton 
being  in  the  secret,  he  and  Dickens  proceed  to 
Forster's  house  and  are  shown  in.  Down  comes 
Forster  into  the  libraiy,  and  is  presented  forthwith 
to  "Professor  Sfovje."  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin" 
is  at  once  referred  to,  and  the  talk  goes  on  in 
that  direction  for  some  time.  At  last  both  Dick- 
ens and  Felton  fell  into  such  a  paroxysm  of  laughter 
at  Forster's  dogged  determination  to  be  compli- 
mentary to  the  world-renowned  novel,  that  they 
could  no  longer  hold  out ;  and  Forster,  becoming 
almost  insane  with  wonder  at  the  hilarious  con- 
duct of  his  two  visitors,  Dickens  revealed  their 
wickedness,  and  a  right  jolly  day  the  happy  trio 
made  of  it. 

Talfourd  informs  us  that  Forster  had  become  to 
Charles  Lamb  as  one  of  his  oldest  campanions,  and 
that  ■\Iary  also  cherished  a  strong  regard  for  hini. 
It  is  surely  a  proof  of  his  admirable  qualities  that 
the  love  of  so  many  of  England's  best  and  greatest 
was  secured  to  him  by  so  lasting  a  tenure.  To  have 
the  friendship  of  Landor,  Dickens,  and  Procter 
through  long  years  ;  to  have  Carlyle  for  a  constant 


92  OLD     ACQUAINTANCE. 

votary,  and  to  be  mourned  by  him  with  an  abiding 
sorrow,  —  these  are  no  slight  tributes  to  purity  of 
purpose. 

Forster  had  that  genuine  sympathy  with  men  of 
letters  which  entitled  him  to  be  their  biographer, 
and  all  his  works  in  that  department  have  a  spe- 
cial charm,  habitually  gained  only  by  a  subtle  and 
earnest  intellect. 

It  is  a  singular  coincidence  that  the  writers  of 
two  of  the  most  brilliant  records  of  travel  of  their 
time  should  have  been  law  students  in  Barry  Corn- 
wall's office.  Kinglake,  the  author  of  "  Eothen," 
and  "U'arburton,  the  author  of  "  The  Crescent  and 
the  Cross,"  were  at  one  period  both  engaged  as 
pupils  in  their  profession  under  the  guidance  of 
Mr.  Procter,  He  frequently  spoke  with  pride  of 
his  two  law  students,  and  when  "Warburton  per- 
ished  at  sea,  his  grief  for  his  brilliant  friend  was 
deep  and  abiding.  Kinglake's  later  literary  fame 
was  always  a  pleasure  to  the  historian's  old  master, 
and  no  one  in  England  loved  better  to  point  out 
the  fine  passages  in  the  "  History  of  the  Invasion 
of  the  Crimea  ""  than  the  old  poet  in  "Weymouth 
Street. 

"Blackwood"  and  the  "Quarterly  Review" 
railed  at  Procter  and  his  author  friends  for  a  long 
period  ;  but  how  true  is  the  saying  of  Macaulay, 
"  that  the  place  of  books  in  the  public  estimation 
is  fixed,  not  by  what  is  wi'itten  aboid  them,  but  by 


OLD     ACQUAINTANCE.  95 

what  is  written  in  them !  "  No  man  was  more 
decried  in  his  day  than  Procter's  friend,  William 
Hazlitt.  The  poet  had  for  the  critic  a  genuine 
admiration ;  and  I  have  heard  him  dilate  with  a 
kind  of  rapture  over  the  critic's  fine  sayings,  quot- 
ing abundant  passages  from  the  essays.  Procter 
would  never  hear  any  disparagement  of  his  friend's 
ability  and  keenness.  I  recall  his  earnest  but  re- 
strained indignation  one  day,  when  some  person 
compared  Hazlitt  with  a  diffusive  modern  writer  of 
notes  on  the  theatre,  and  I  remember  with  what 
contempt,  in  his  sweet  forgivable  way,  the  old  man 
spoke  of  much  that  passes  nowadays  for  criticism. 
He  said  Hazlitt  was  exactly  the  opposite  of  Lord 
Chesterfield,  who  advised  his  son,  if  he  could  not 
,'et  at  a  thing  in  a  straight  line  to  tiy  the  ser- 
pentine one.  There  were  no  crooked  pathways  in 
Hazlitt's  intellect.  His  style  is  brilliant,  but  never 
cloyed  with  ornamentation.  Hazlitt's  paper  on 
Gilford  was  thought  by  Procter  to  be  as  pungent  a 
bit  of  writing  as  had  appeared  in  his  day,  and  he 
quoted  this  paragraph  as  a  sample  of  its  biting  jus- 
tice :  "  Mr.  Gifford  is  admirably  qualified  for  the 
situation  he  has  held  for  many  years  as  editor  of 
the  *  Quarterly '  by  a  happy  combination  of  de- 
fects, natural  and  acquired."  In  one  of  his  letters 
to  me  Procter  writes,  "  I  despair  of  the  age  that 
has  forgotten  to  read  Hazlitt." 

Procter  was  a  delightful  prose  writer,  as  well  as 


96  OLD     ACQUAINTANCE. 

a  charming  poet.  Having  met  in  old  magazines 
and  annuals  several  of  his  essays  and  stories,  and 
admiring  their  style  and  spirit,  I  induced  him,  after 
much  persuasion,  to  collect  and  publish  in  America 
his  prose  works.  The  result  -was  a  couple  of  vol- 
umes, which  were  brought  out  in  Boston  in  1853. 
In  them  there  are  perhaps  no  "  thoughts  that 
wander  through  eternity,"  but  they  abound  in  fan- 
cies which  the  reader  will  recognize  as  agile 

"  Daughters  of  the  earth  and  sun." 

In  them  there  is  nothing  loud  or  painful,  and  who- 
ever really  loves  "a  good  book,"  and  knows  it  to  be 
such  on  trial,  will  find  Barry  CorawaB's  "  Essays  and 
Tales  in  Prose"  most  delectable  reading.  "  Impara- 
dised,"  as  Milton  hath  the  word,  on  a  summer  hill- 
side, or  tented  by  the  cool  salt  wave,  no  better  after- 
noon literature  can  be  selected.  One  will  never 
meet  with  distorted  metaphor  or  tawdry  rhetoric  in 
Barry's  thoughtful  pages,  but  will  find  a  calm 
philosophy  and  a  beautiful  faith,  very  precious  and 
profitable  in  these  days  of  doubt  and  insecurity  of 
intellect.  There  is  a  respite  and  a  sympathy  in  this 
fine  spirit,  and  so  I  commend  him  heartily  in  times 
so  full  of  turmoil  and  suspicion  as  these.  One  of 
the  stories  in  the  first  volume  of  these  prose  writ- 
iugs,  called  "  The  Man-Huuter,"  is  quite  equal  in 
power  to  any  of  the  graphic  pieces  of  a  similar 
character  ever  written  by  De  Quincey  or  Dickens, 


OLD     ACQUAINTANCE.  \)i 

but  the  tone  in  these  books  is  commonly  more 
tender  and  inclining  to  melancholy.  "What,  for 
instance,  could  be  more  heart-moving  than  these 
passages  of  his  on  the  death  of  little  children  ? 

"  I  scarcely  know  how  it  is,  but  the  deaths  of  children 
seem  to  me  always  less  premature  than  those  of  elder  per- 
sons. ISot  that  they  are  in  fact  so ;  but  it  is  because  they 
themselves  have  little  or  no  relation  to  time  or  maturity. 
Life  seems  a  race  which  they  have  yet  to  inin  entirely.  They 
have  made  no  progress  toward  the  goal.  They  are  born  — 
nothing  furtlier.  But  it  seems  hard,  when  a  man  has  toiled 
high  up  the  steep  hill  of  knowledge,  that  he  should  be  cast 
like  Sisyplius,  downward  in  a  moment;  that  he  who  has 
worn  the  day  and  wasted  the  night  in  gathering  the  gold  of 
science  should  be,  with  all  his  wealth  of  learning,  all  his 
accumulations,  made  bankmpt  at  once.  What  becomes  of 
all  the  riches  of  the  soul,  the  piles  and  pyramids  of  precious 
thouglits  which  men  heap  together?  Where  are  Shake- 
speare's imagination,  Bacon's  learning,  Galileo's  dream? 
Where  is  tlie  sweet  fancy  of  Sidney,  the  airy  spirit  of  Fletch- 
er, and  Milton's  thought  severe  ?  Methiuks  such  tilings 
should  not  die  and  dissipate,  when  a  hair  can  live  for  centu- 
ries, and  a  brick  of  Egypt  will  last  three  thousand  years  ! 
I  am  content  to  believe  that  the  mind  of  man  survives 
(somewhere  or  other)  his  clay. 

"  I  was  once  present  at  the  death  of  a  little  child.  I  will 
not  pain  the  reader  by  portraying  its  agonies ;  but  when  its 
breath  was  gone,  its  life,  (nothing  more  than  a  cloud  of 
smoke!)  and  it  lay  like  a  waxen  image  before  me,  I  turned 
my  eyes  to  its  moaning  mother,  and  sighed  out  my  few 
words  of  comfort.  But  I  am  a  beggar  in  grief.  1  can  feel 
and  sigh  and  look  kindly,  I  think  ;  but  I  have  nothing  to 
give.  My  tongue  deserts  me.  I  know  the  inutility  of  too 
soon  comforting.  I  know  that  /  should  weep  were  I  the 
loser,  and  I  let  the  tears  ha\e   their  way.      Sometimes  a 


98  OLD     ACQUAINTANCE. 

Movd  or  two  I  can  muster:  a  '  Sigli  no  more! '  and  'Dear 
ladv,  do  not  grieve  ! '  but  further  1  am  mute  and  useless." 

I  have  many  letters  and  kind  little  notes  which 
Procter  used  to  write  nie  during  the  years  I  knew 
him  best.  His  tricksy  fancies  peeped  out  in  his 
correspondence,  and  several  of  his  old  friends  in 
England  thought  no  literary  man  of  his  time  had  a 
better  epistolary  style.  His  neat  and  elegant  chi- 
rography  on  the  back  of  a  letter  was  always  a  dehght- 
ful  foretaste  of  something  good  inside,  and  I  never 
received  one  of  his  welcome  missives  that  did  not 
contain,  no  matter  how  brief  it  happened  to  be, 
welcome  passages  of  wit  or  affectionate  interest. 

In  oue  of  his  early  letters  to  me  he  says  :  — 

"  There  is  no  one  rising  hereabouts  in  litei-ature.  I  sup- 
pose our  national  genius  is  taking  a  mechanical  turn.  And, 
in  truth,  it  is  much  better  to  make  a  good  steam-engine 
than  to  manufacture  a  bad  poem.  'Building  the  lofty 
rhyme '  is  a  good  thing,  but  our  present  buildings  are  of  a 
low  order,  and  seldom  reach  the  Attic.  This  piece  of  wit 
will  scarcely  throw  you  into  a  fit,  I  imagine,  your  risible 
muscles  being  doubtless  kept  in  good  order." 

In  another  he  writes :  — 

"I  see  you  have  some  capital  names  in  the  'Atlantic 
Monthly.'  If  they  will  only  put  forth  their  strength,  there 
is  no  doubt  as  to  the  result,  but  the  misfortune  is  that  per- 
sons who  write  anon>-mously  ilon't  put  forth  their  strength, 
in  general.  I  was  a  maanziue  writer  for  no  less  than  a 
dozen  years,  and  I  felt  that  no  personal  credit  or  responsi- 
bility attached  to  my  literary  trifling,  and  although  I  some- 
times did  pretty  well  (for  me),  yet  I  never  did  my  best." 


OLD    ACQUAINTANCE.  99 

As  I  read  over  again  the  portfolio  of  his  letters 
to  me,  bearing  date  from  1848  to  1806,  I  find  many 
passages  of  interest,  but  most  of  them  are  too  per- 
sonal for  type.  A  few  extracts,  however,  I  cannot 
resist  copying.  Some  of  his  epistles  are  enriched 
with  a  song  or  a  sonnet,  then  just  written,  and 
there  are  also  frequent  references  in  them  to  Amer- 
ican editions  of  his  poetical  and  prose  works,  which 
he  collected  at  the  request  of  his  Boston  publishers. 

In  June,  1851,  he  writes  :  — • 

"I  have  encountered  a  good  many  of  your  countn'men 
here  lately,  but  liave  been  introduced  only  to  a  few.  I 
found  Mr.  Norton,  wlio  has  returned  to  you,  and  Mr. 
Dwig-lit,  who  is  still  here,  I  believe,  very  intelHg-ent  and 
agreeable. 

"  If  all  Americans  were  like  them  and  yourself,  and  if  all 
Englislinien  were  like  Kenyon  and  (so  far  as  regards  a 
desire  to  judge  fairly)  myself,  I  think  there  M^ould  be  little 
or  no  quarrelling  between  our  small  island  and  your  great 
continent. 

"  Our  glass  palace  is  a  perpetual  theme  for  small-talk.  It 
usurps  the  place  of  the  weather,  which  is  turned  adrift,  or 
laid  up  in  ordmai7  for  future  use.  Nevertheless  it  (T  mean 
the  palace)  is  a  remarkable  achievement,  after  all ;  and 
I  speak  sincerely  when  I  say,  'AH  honor  and  glory  to 
Paxton ! '  If  the  strings  of  my  poor  little  lyre  were  not 
rasty  and  overworn,  I  think  I  should  try  to  sing  some  of  my 
nonsense  verses  before  his  image,  and  add  to  the  idolatry 
already  existing. 

"  If  you  have  hotter  weather  in  America  than  that  which 
is  at  present  burning  and  blistering  us  here,  you  are  en- 
titled to  pity.  If  it  continue  much  longer,  I  shall  be  held  in 
solution  for  the  remainder  of  my  days,  and  shall  be  renin rk- 


100  OLD     ACQUAIXTANCE. 

able  as  '  Ovynren,  tlie  poet '  i' reduced  to  his  natural  weakness 
and  simplicity  by  the  hot  summer  of  I'^ol',  instead  of 
"  Your  very  sincere  and  obliged 

"  B.  W.  Procter." 

Here  is  a  brief  reference  to  Judd's  remarkable 
novel,  forming  part  of  a  note  written  to  me  in 
1852:  — 

"Thanks  for  '  Marearet '  'the  book,  not  the  woman\  that 
you  have  sent  me.  When  will  you  want  it  back  ?  and  who 
is  the  author  ?  There  is  a  great  deal  of  clever  writing  in 
it,  —  great  observation  of  nature,  and  also  of  character 
among  a  certain  class  of  persons.  But  it  is  almost  too  mi- 
nute, and  for  me  decidedly  too  theological.  You  see  what 
irreligious  people  we  are  here.  I  shall  come  over  to  one  of 
your  camp-meetings  and  tnj  to  be  converted.  What  will 
they  administer  in  such  a  case?  brimstone  or  brandy?  I 
shall  try  the  latter  firstl" 

Here  is  a  letter  bearing  date  "  Thursday  night, 
Xovember  25,  1852,"  in  which  be  refers  to  his 
own  writings,  and  copies  a  charming  song  :  — 

"  Your  letter,  announcing  the  amval  of  the  little  preface, 
reached  me  last  night.  I  shall  look  out  for  the  book  in  about 
three  weeks  hence,  as  you  tell  me  that  they  are  all  print- 
ed. Y'ou  Americans  are  a  rapid  race.  When  I  thought  you 
were  in  Scotland,  lo,  you  had  touched  the  soil  of  Boston ; 
and  when  I  thought  you  were  nnpacking  my  poor  MS. , 
tumbling  it  out  of  your  great  trunk,  behold  '.  it  is  arranged  — 
it  is  in  the  printer's  hands  —  it  is  pnnted — published  —  it 
is  —  ah  I  would  I  could  add,  SOLD  I  That,  after  aU,  is  the 
grand  triumph  in  Boston  as  well  as  London. 

"Well,  since  it  is  not  sold  yet,  let  us  be  generous  and 
give  a  few  copies  away.  Indeed,  such  is  my  weakness,  that 
I  would  sometimes  rather  give  than  sell.    In  the  present 


OLD     ACQUAINTANCE.  101 

instance  you  will  do  nie  the  kindness  to  send  a  copy  each  to 
Mr.  Charles  Sumner,  Mr.  Hillard,  Mr.  Norton-,  but  no  —  my 
wife  requests  to  be  tlie  donor  to  Mr.  Norton,  so  you  must, 
if  you  please,  write  his  name  in  the  first  leaf  and  state  that 
it  comes  from  'Mrs.  Procter.'  1  liked  liim  very  much  when 
I  met  him  in  London,  and  I  should  wish  him  to  be  reminded 
of  his  English  acquaintance. 

"  1  am  writing  to  you  at  eleven  o'clock  at  night,  after  a 
long  and  busy  day,  and  I  write  notv  rather  than  wait  for  a 
little  inspiration,  because  the  mail,  I  believe,  starts  to-mor- 
row. The  unwilling  Minerva  is  at  my  elbow,  and  1  feel 
that  every  sentence  I  write,  were  it  pounded  ten  times  in 
a  mortar,  would  come  out  again  unleavened  and  hea\  y. 
Braying  some  people  in  a  mortar,  you  know,  is  but  a  weary 
and  unprofital)le  process. 

"  You  speak  of  London  as  a  delightful  place.  I  don't 
know  how  it  may  be  in  the  white-bait  season,  but  at  present 
it  is  foggy,  rainy,  cold,  dull.  Half  of  us  are  unwell  and  the 
other  lialf  dissatisfied.  Some  are  apprehensi\e  of  an  invasion, 
—  not  an  impossible  e\ent ;  some  writing  odes  to  the  Duke  of 
Wellington  ;  and  I  am  putting  my  good  friend  to  sleep  with 
the  flattest  prose  that  ever  dropped  from  an  English  pen. 
I  wish  tliat  it  were  better;  I  w^sh  that  it  were  even  worse; 
but  it  IS  the  most  undeniable  twaddle.  I  must  go  to  bed, 
and  invoke  the  Muses  in  the  morning.  At  present,  I  can- 
not touch  one  of  their  petticoats. 

"A  SLEEPY  SONG. 

"  Sing !  sing  me  to  sleep  ! 

With  gentle  words,  in  some  sweet  slumberous  measure, 
Such  as  lone  poet  on  some  shady  steep 
Sings  to  the  silence  in  his  noonday  leisure. 

"  Sing  !  as  the  river  sings, 

When  gently  it  flows  between  soft  banks  of  flowers. 
And  the  bee  murmurs,  and  the  cuckoo  brings 
His  faint  Mav  music,  'tween  the  golden  showers. 


102  OLD     ACQUAIXTAXCE. 

"  Sing  I  O  divinest  tone  ! 

1  sink  beneatli  some  wizard's  charming  wand; 
I  yield,  I  mo\e,  by  soothing  breezes  blown, 
O'er  twiliglit  shores,  into  the  Dreaming  Land ! 

"  I  read  the  above  to  you'when  you  were  in  London.  It 
xrill  appear  in  an  Annual  edited  by  Miss  Power  (Lady  Bless- 
ington's  niece). 

"  Friday  Morning. 
"The  wind  blowing  down  the  chimney;  the  rain  sprink- 
ling my  windows.     The  English  Apollo  hides   his  head  — 
you  can   scarcely  see   him   on  the   '  misty  mountain-tops ' 
(those  brick  ones  which  you  remember  in  Portland  Place  i. 

"  My  friend  Thackeray  is  gone  to  America,  and  I  hope  is, 
by  this  time,  in  the  United  States.  He  goes  to  New  York, 
and  afterward  I  suppose  (but  I  don't  know)  to  Boston  and 
Philadelphia.  Have  you  seen  Esmond .'  There  are  parts  of 
it  charmingly  written.  His  pathos  is  to  me  very  touching. 
I  believe  that  the  best  mode  of  making  one's  way  to  a  per- 
son's head  is  —  through'his  heart. 

"  I  hope  that  your  literary  men  will  like  some  of  my  little 
prose  matters.  I  know  that  they  will  try  to  like  them;  but 
the  papers  have  been  written  so  long,  and  all,  or  almost  all, 
written  so  hastily,  that  1  have  my  misgivings.  However, 
they  must  take  their  chance. 

"  Had  I  leisure  to  complete  something  that  I  began  two 
or  three  years  ;igo,  and  in  which  I  have  written  a  chapter  or 
two,  I  should  reckon  more  surely  on  success;  but  I  shall 
probably  never  finish  the  thing,  although  I  contemplated 
only  one  volume. 

"(If  you  cannot  read  this  letter  apply  to  the  printer's 
devil.  —  Hiberaicus.) 

"  Farewell.  All  good  be  with  you.  My  wife  desires  to 
be  kindly  remembered  by  you. 

"  Always  yours,  very  sincerely, 

"B.  W.  Procter. 

"  P.  S.  —  Can  you  contrive  to  send  Mr.  Willis  a  copy  of 
the  prose  book?    If  so,  pray  do." 


OLD     ACQUAINTANCE.  103 

In  February,  1853,  lie  writes:  — 

"  Those  famous  volumes,  the  advent  of  which  was  some 
time  since  announced  by  the  great  transatlantic  trumpet, 
have  duly  arrived.  My  wife  is  properly  grateful  for  her 
copy,  which,  indeed,  impresses  both  of  us  with  respect  for 
the  American  skill  in  binding.  Iseither  too  gay  to  be  gaudy, 
nor  too  grave,  so  as  to  atfect  the  tlieological,  it  hits  tliat 
happy  medium  which  agrees  with  the  tastes  of  most  people 
and  disgusts  none.  We  should  flatter  ourselves  that  it  is 
intended  to  represent  the  matter  within,  but  that  we  are 
afraid  of  incurring  the  sin  of  vanity,  and  tlie  indiscretion  of 
taking  appearances  too  much  upon  trust.  Wc  suspend  our 
conjectures  on  this  very  interesting  subject.  The  whole 
getting  up  of  the  book  is  excellent. 

"  For  the  little  scraps  of  (critical)  sugar  enclosed  in  your 
letter,  due  thanks.  These  will  sweeten  our  imagination  for 
some  time  to  come. 

"  I  have  been  obliged  to  give  all  the  copies  you  sent  me 
away.  I  dare  say  you  will  not  grudge  me  four  or  five  copies 
more,  to  be  sent  at  your  convenience,  of  course.  Let  me 
hear  from  you  at  the  same  time.  You  can  give  me  one  of 
those  frequent  quarters  of  an  hour  Avhich  I  know  you  now 
devote  to  a  meditation  on  '  things  in  general.' 

"  I  am  glad  that  you  like  Thackeray.  He  is  well  worth 
your  liking.  I  trust  to  his  making  both  friends  and  money 
in  America,  and  to  his  keeping  both.  I  am  not  so  sure  of 
the  money,  however,  for  he  has  a  lii)eral  hand.  I  should 
have  liked  to  have  been  at  one  of  the  dinners  you  speak  of. 
(When  shall  you  begin  that  bridge  ?  You  seem  to  be  a  long 
time  about  it.  It  will,  I  dare  say,  be  a  Ijridge  of  boats, 
after  all.)  .... 

"  I  Avas  reading  (rather  re-reading)  the  other  evening  the 
introductory  chapter  to  the  '  Scarlet  Letter. '  It  is  admirably 
written.  Not  having  any  great  sympathy  with  a  custom- 
liouse,  — nor,  indeed,  with  Salem,  except  tliat  it  seems  to  be 
Hawthorne's  birthplace,  —  all  my  attention  was  concen- 
trated on  the  style,  which  seems  to  me  excellent. 


104  OLD     ACQUAINTANCE. 

"The  most  striking  book  which  has  been  recently  pub- 
lished here  is  '  Villette,'  by  the  authoress  of '  Jane  Eyre,'  who, 
as  you  know,  is  a  Miss  Bronte.  The  book  does  not  give  one 
tlie  most  pleasing  notion  of  the  authoress,  perhaps,  but  it  is 
very  clever,  grapiiic,  vigorous.  It  is  '  man's  meat,'  and  not 
the  whipped  syllabub,  which  is  all  froth,  without  any  jam  at 
the  l)Ottom.     Tlie  scene  of  the  drama  is  Brussels. 

'•  I  was  sorry  to  hear  of  poor  Willis.  Our  critics  here 
were  too  severe  upon  him 

"  The  Frost  King  vvulg.  Jack  Frost)  has  come  down  upon 
us  with  all  his  might.  Banished  from  the  pleasant  shores 
of  Boston,  he  has  come  with  his  cold  scythe  and  ice  pincers 
to  our  undefended  little  island,  and  is  tyrannizing  in  every 
comer  and  over  every  part  of  every  person.  >'othing  is  too 
great  for  liim,  nothing  too  mean.  He  condescends  even  to 
lay  hold  of  the  nose  i.an  offence  for  which  any  one  below 
the  dignity  of  a  King  —  or  a  President  —  would  be  kicked;. 
As  for  me,  I  have  taken  refuge  in 

"  A  SONG,  WITH  A  MORAL. 

"  When  the  winter  bloweth  loud. 
And  the  earth  is  in  a  shroud. 
Frozen  rain  or  sleety  snow 
Dimming  every  dream  l)elow,  — 
There  is  e'er  a  spot  of  green 
"WTience  the  heavens  may  be  seen. 

"  Wlien  our  purse  is  shrinking  fast. 

And  our  friend  is  lost,  {the  last  1 ) 

And  the  world  doth  pour  its  pain. 

Sharper  than  the  frozen  rain,  — 

There  is  still  a  spot  of  green 

Whence  the  heavens  may  be  seen. 

"  Let  us  never  meet  despair 
While  the  little  spot  is  tbere ; 


OLD     ACQUAINTANCE.  105 

Winter  brighteneUi  into  May, 
And  sullen  night  to  sunny  day,  — 
Seek  we  then  the  spot  of  green 
Wlience  the  heavens  may  be  seen. 

"  I  liave  left  myself  little  space  for  more  small-talk.  I 
must,  therefore,  conclude  with  wishing  that  your  English 
dreams  may  continue  bright,  and  that  when  they  begin  to 
fade  you  will  come  and  relume  at  one  of  the  white-bait  din- 
ners of  which  you  used  to  talk  in  such  terms  of  rapture. 

"  Have  1  space  to  say  that  I  am  very  truly  yours  ? 

"  B.  W.  Procter." 

A  few  months  later,  in  the  same  year  (1853),  he 
sits  by  his  open  window  in  London,  on  a  morn- 
ing of  spring,  and  sends  off  the  following  pleasant 
words  :  — 

"  You  also  must  now  be  in  the  first  burst  and  sunshine  of 
spring.  Your  spear-grass  is  showing  its  points,  your  suc- 
culent grass  its  richness,  even  your  little  plant  [  V  ]  (so  use- 
ful for  certain  invalids)  is  seen  here  and  there ;  primroses 
are  peeping  out  in  your  neighborhood,  and  you  are  looking 
for  cowslips  to  come.  1  say  nothing  of  your  hawthorns 
(from  the  common  May  to  the  classic  Nathaniel),  except  that 
I  trust  they  are  thriving,  and  like  to  put  forth  a  world  of 
blossoms  soon. 

'  With  all  this  wealtli,  present  and  future. 
The  yellow  cowslip  and  the  pale  primrose,' 

you  will  doubtless  feel  disposed  to  scatter  your  small  coins 
al)road  on  the  poor,  and,  among  other  things,  to  forward  to 

your  humble  correspondent  those  copies  of  B C 's 

prose  works  which  you  promised  I  know  not  how  long  ago. 
'  He  who  gives  speedili/,'  they  say,  'gives  twice.'  1  quote, 
as  you  see,  from  the  Latins. 

"  1  liave  just  got  the  two  additional  volumes  of  De  Quin- 


106  OLD     ACQUAIXTAXCE. 

cey,  for  wliicli  —  thanks  !  I  have  not  seen  Mr.  Parker,  who 
brouglit  them,  and  who  left  Ids  card  here  yesterday,  bui  1 
have  asked  if  he  will  come  and  breakfast  with  me  on  Sun- 
day, —  my  only  certain  leisure  day.  Your  De  Quincey  is  a 
man  of  a  good  deal  of  reading,  and  has  thought  on  divers 
and  sundry  matters  ;  but  he  is  evidently  so  thoroughly  well 
pleased  with  the  Sieur  '  Thomas  De  Quincey  '  that  his  self- 
sufficiency  spoils  even  his  best  works.  Then  some  of  his 
facts  are,  I  hear,  quasi  facts  only,  not  unfrequently.  He 
has  his  moments  when  he  sleeps,  and  becomes  oblivious  of 
all  but  the  aforesaid  'Thomas,'  who  pervades  Ijoth  his 
sleeping  and  waking  visions.  I,  like  all  authors,  am  glad  to 
have  a  little  praise  now  and  then  lit  is  my  bydromelt,  but 
it  must  be  dispensed  by  others.  I  do  not  think  it  decent  to 
manufacture  the  sweet  liquor  myself,  and  I  hate  a  coxcomb, 
whether  in  dress  or  print. 

"We  have  little  or  no  literary  news  here.  Our  poets  are 
all  going  to  the  poorhouse  (except  Tennyson  i,  and  our  prose 
writers  are  piling  up  their  works  for  the  next  5th  of  No- 
vember, when  there  will  be  a  great  bonfire.  It  is  deuced 
lucky  that  my  immortal  (ah !  I  am  De  Quinceying  i  —  1 
mean  my  humlile  —  performances  were  printed  in  .Vmerica, 
so  that  they  will  escape.  By  the  by,  are  they  on  fools- 
cap ^  for  I  forgot  to  caution  you  on  that  head. 

"  I  have  been  spending  a  week  at  Liverpool,  where  I  re- 
joiced to  hear  that  Hawthorne's  appointment  was  settled, 
and  that  it  was  a  valuable  post ;  but  I  hear  that  it  lasts  for 
three  years  only.  This  is  melancholy.  I  hope,  however, 
that  he  will  '  realize '  (as  you  transatlantics  say  i  as  much  as 
he  can  during  his  consulate,  and  that  your  next  President 
will  have  the  good  taste  and  the  good  sense  to  renew  his 
lease  for  three  years  more. 

"  I  liave  not  seen  Mrs.  Stowe.  I  shall  probably  meet  her 
somewhere  or  other  wlien  she  comes  to  London. 

"  I  dare  not  ask  after  Mr.  Longfellow.  He  was  kind 
enough  to  write  me  a  very  agreeable  letter  some  time  ago, 
which  I  ought  to  have  answered.     I  dare  say  that  he  has  for- 


OLD     ACQUAINTANCE.  107 

gfottcn  it,  but  my  conscience  is  a  serpent  tliat  gives  me  a  bite 
or  a  sting  every  now  and  then  when  I  tliink  of  him.  The 
first  time  I  am  in  fit  condition  (I  mean  in  point  of  brightness) 
to  reply  to  so  famous  a  correspondent,  I  sliall  try  what  an 
English  pen  and  ink  will  enable  me  to  say.  In  the  mean 
time,  God  be  thanked  for  all  things  ! 

"  My  wife  heard  from  Thackeray  about  ten  days  ago.  He 
speaks  gratefully  of  the  kindness  that  he  has  met  with  in 
America.  Among  other  things,  it  appears  that  he  has  seen 
something  of  your  slaves,  whom  he  represents  as  leading  a 
very  easy  life,  and  as  being  fat,  cheerful,  and  happy.  Nev- 
ertheless, I  (for  one)  would  rather  be  a  free  man,  —  such  is 
the  singularity  of  my  opinions.  If  ray  prosings  should  ever 
in  the  course  of  the  next  twenty  years  require  to  be  re- 
printed, pray  take  note  of  the  above  opinion. 

"  And  now  I  have  no  more  paper ;  I  have  scarcely  room 
left  to  say  that  I  hope  you  are  well,  and  to  remind  you  that 
for  your  ten  lines  of  writing  I  have  sent  you  back  a  hun- 
dred. Give  my  best  compliments  to  all  whom  I  know,  per- 
sonally or  otherwise.  God  be  with  you  ! 
"  Yours,  very  sincerely, 

"B.  W.  Procter." 

Procter  always  seemed  to  be  astounded  at  the 
travelling  spirit  of  Americans,  and  in  his  letters  he 
makes  frequent  reference  to  our  "  national  propen- 
sity," as  he  calls  it. 

"  Half  an  hour  ago,"  he  writes  in  July,  185.3,  "  we  liad 
three  of  your  countrymen  here  to  lunch, — countrymen,  I 
mean,  Hibernically,  for  two  of  them  wore  petticoats.  They 
are  all  going  to  Switzerland,  France,  Italy,  Egypt,  and 
Syria.  What  an  adventurous  race  you  are,  you  Americans  ! 
Here  the  women  go  merely  '  from  the  blue  bed  to  the 
])rown,'  and  think  that  they  have  travelled  and  seen  tiie 
world.  1  myself  should  not  care  much  to  be  confined  to  a 
circle  reaching  six  or  seven  miles  round  London.     There  are 


108  OLD     ACQUAIXTAXCE. 

the  fresh  -ninds  and  wild  thyme  on  Hampstead  Heatli,  and 
from  Richmond  you  may  survey  the  Naiades.  Higligate, 
•wliere  Coleridge  lived,  Entield,  where  Charles  Lamb  dwelt, 
are  not  far  off.  Turning  eastward,  there  is  the  river  Lea,  in 
which  Izaak  Walton  lished  ;  and  farther  on  —  ha  !  what  do 
I  see  ?  What  are  tliose  little  fish  frisking  in  the  hatter  (the 
great  >'aval  Hospital  close  by  s  which  fixed  the  affections  of 
the  enamored  American  while  he  resided  in  London,  and 
have  been  floating  in  his  dreams  ever  since  ?  They  are  said 
by  the  naturalists  to  be  of  the  species  Blandamentum  album, 
and  are  by  vulgar  aldermen  spoken  carelessly  of  as  white- 
bait. 

"  London  is  full  of  carriages,  full  of  strangers,  full  of  par- 
ties feasting  on  strawberi-ies  and  ices  and  other  tilings 
intended  to  allay  the  heat  of  summer;  but  the  Summer 
herself  (fickle  virgin >  keeps  back,  or  has  been  stopped  some- 
where or  other, — perhaps  at  the  Liverpool  custom-house, 
where  the  very  brains  of  men  (their  Iwoksj  are  held  in  du- 
rance, as  I  know  to  my  cost. 

"  Thackeray  is  about  to  publish  a  new  work  in  numbers, 
—  a  serial,  as  the  newspapers  call  it.  Thomas  Carlyle  is 
publishing  I'a  si.\penny  matter'i  in  favor  of  the  slave-trade. 
^Novelists  of  all  sliades  are  plying  their  trades.  Husbands 
are  killing  their  wives  in  every  day's  newspaper.  Burglars 
are  peaching  against  each  other;  there  is  no  longer  honor 
among  thieves.  I  am  starting  for  Leicester  on  a  week's  ex- 
pedition amidst  the  mad  people  ;  and  the  Emperor  of  Rus- 
sia has  crossed  the  Pruth,  and  intends  to  make  a  tour  of 
Turkey. 

"  All  this  appears  to  me  little  better  than  idle,  restless 
vanity.  0  my  friend,  what  a  fuss  and  a  pother  we  are  all 
making,  we  little  flifs  who  are  going  round  on  the  great 
wheel  of  time !  To-day  we  are  flickering  and  buzzing  al)out, 
our  little  bits  of  wings  glittering  in  the  sunshine,  and  to- 
nion-ow  we  are  safe  enougli  in  the  little  crevice  at  the  back 
of  the  fireplace,  or  hid  in  the  folds  of  the  old  curtain,  shut 
up,  stiff  and  torpid,  for  the  long  winter.  Wiiat  do  you  say 
to  that  profound  reflection  ? 


OLD      ACQUAINTANCE.  109 

"  I  struggle  against  the  lassitude  -which  besets  me,  and 
strive  in  vain  to  be  either  sensible  or  jocose.  1  had  better 
say  farewell." 

On  Christmas  day,  1854,  he  writes  in  rather 
flagging  spirits,  induced  by  ill  health  :  — 

"  I  have  owed  you  a  letter  for  these  many  months,  my 
good  friend.  T  am  afraid  to  think  hoic  long,  lest  the  interest 
on  the  debt  should  have  exceeded  the  capital,  and  be  be- 
yond my  power  to  pay. 

"  You  must  be  good-natured  and  e.xcuse  me,  for  I  have 
been  ill  —  very  frequently  —  and  dispirited.  A  bodily  com- 
plaint torments  me,  that  has  tormented  me  for  the  last  two 
years.  I  no  longer  look  at  the  world  through  a  rose-colored 
glass.  The  prospect,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  is  gray,  grim,  dull, 
barren,  full  of  withered  leaves,  without  flowers,  or  if  there 
be  any,  all  of  them  trampled  down,  soiled,  discolored,  and 
without  fragrance.  You  see  what  a  bit  of  half-smoked 
glass  I  am  looking  through.  At  all  events,  you  must  see 
how  entirely  I  am  disabled  from  returning,  except  in  sober 
sentences,  the  lively  and  good-natured  letters  and  other 
things  which  you  have  sent  me  from  America.  They  were 
welcome,  and  I  thank  you  for  them  now,  in  a  few  words,  as 
you  observe,  but  sincerely.  I  am  somewhat  brief,  even  in 
my  gratitude.  Had  I  l)een  in  braver  spirits,  T  might  have 
spurred  my  poor  Pegasus,  and  sent  you  some  lines  on  the 
Alma,  or  the  Inkerman, —  bloody  battles,  but  exhibiting 
marks  not  to  be  mistaken  of  tlie  old  English  heroism, 
which,  after  all  is  said  al)out  the  enervating  effects  of  luxury, 
is  as  grand  and  manifest  as  in  the  ancient  fights  which 
English  history  talks  of  so  much.  Even  you,  sternest  of 
republicans,  will,  I  think,  be  proud  of  the  indomitable  cour- 
age of  Englishmen,  and  gladly  refer  to  your  old  paternity. 
I,  at  least,  should  be  proud  of  Americans  fighting  after  the 
same  fashion  (and  witliout  doubt  they  tvo^dd  tight  thus), 
just  as  old  people  exult  in  the  brave  conduct  of  their  run- 


110  OLD      ACQUAINTANX'E. 

away  sons.  I  cannot  read  of  these  later  battles  without 
the  tears  coming  into  my  eyes.  It  is  said  by  '  our  corre- 
spondent '  at  New  York  that  the  folks  there  rejoice  iu  the 
losses  and  disasters  of  the  allies.  This  can  never  be  the 
case,  surely?  >«'o  one  whose  opinion  is  worth  a  rap  can 
rejoice  at  any  success  of  the  Czar,  whose  dout)le-deaLing 
and  unscrupulous  greediness  must  have  rendered  liim  an 
object  of  loathing  to  every  well-thinking  man.  But  Mhat 
have  1  to  do  with  politics,  or  you  ?  Our  '  pleasant  object 
and  serene  employ'  are  books,  books.  Let  us  return  to 
pacific  thoughts. 

"  What  a  number  of  things  have  happened  since  I  saw 
you!  I  looked  for  you  in  the  last  spring,  little  dreaming 
that  so  fat  and  flourishing  a  '  Statesman '  could  be  over- 
thrown by  a  little  fever.  I  had  even  begun  some  doggerel, 
announcing  to  you  the  advent  of  the  white-bait,  which  I 
imagined  were  likely  to  be  all  eaten  up  in  your  absence. 
My  memory  is  so  bad  that  I  cannot  recollect  half  a  dozen 
lines,  probably  not  one,  as  it  originally  stood. 

"  I  was  at  Liverpool  last  J  une.  After  two  or  three  attempts 
1  contrived  to  seize  on  the  famous  Nathaniel  Hawthorne. 
Need  I  say  that  1  like  him  very  much ?  He  is  very  sensi- 
ble, very  genial,  —  a  little  shy,  1  think  (for  an  American  !)  — 
and  altogether  extremely  agreeable.  I  wish  that  I  could 
see  more  of  him,  but  our  orbits  are  wide  apart.  Now  and 
then  —  once  in  two  years  —  I  diverge  into  and  cross  his 
circle,  but  at  other  times  vet  are  separated  by  a  space 
amounting  to  210  miles.  He  has  three  children,  and  a  nice 
little  wife,  who  has  good-humor  engraved  on  her  counte- 
nance. 

"As  to  verse  —  yes,  I  have  begun  a  dozen  trifling  things, 
which  are  in  my  drawer  unfinished;  poor  rags  with  ink 
upon  them,  none  of  them,  I  am  afraid,  properly  labelled  for 
posterity.  I  was  for  si.x  weeks  at  Ryde,  in  the  Isle  of 
Wight,  this  year,  but  so  unwell  that  I  could  not  write 
a  line,  scarcely  read  one;  sitting  out  in  the  sun,  eating, 
drinking,  sleeping,  and  sometimes  (poor  soul  I)  imagining  I 


OLD     ACQUAINTANCE.  Ill 

was  thinking.  One  Sunday  I  saw  a  magnificent  steamer 
go  by,  and  on  placing  my  eye  to  the  telescope  1  saw  some 
Stars  and  Stripes  (streaming  from  the  mast-head)  that  car- 
ried me  away  to  Boston.  By  the  way,  when  will  you  fin- 
ish the  bridge  ? 

"I  hear  strange  hints  of  j'ou  all  quarrelling  about  the 
slave  question.  Is  it  so  ?  You  are  so  happy  and  prosperous 
in  America  that  you  must  be  on  the  lookout  for  clouds, 
surely !  When  you  see  Emerson,  Longfellow,  Sumner, 
any  one  I  know,  pray  bespeak  for  me  a  kind  thought  or 
word  from  them." 

Procter  was  always  on  the  lookout  for  Haw- 
thorne, whom  he  greatly  admired.  In  November, 
1855,  he  says,  in  a  brief  letter :  — 

"  I  have  not  seen  Hawthorne  since  I  wrote  to  you.  He 
came  to  London  this  summer,  but,  1  am  sorry  to  say,  did 
not  inquire  for  me.  As  it  turned  out,  I  was  absent  from 
town,  but  sent  him  (by  Mrs.  Russell  Sturgis)  a  letter  of  in- 
troduction to  Leigh  Hunt,  who  was  ^  ery  much  pleased  with 
him.  Poor  Hunt !  he  is  the  most  genial  of  men ;  and,  now 
that  liis  wife  is  confined  to  her  bed  by  rheumatism,  is  re- 
covering himself,  and,  1  hope,  doing  well.  He  asked  to 
come  and  see  me  the  other  day.  I  willingly  assented,  and 
when  I  saw  him  —  grown  old  and  sad  and  broken  down  in 
health  —  all  my  ancient  liking  for  him  revived. 

"  You  ask  me  to  send  you  some  verse.  I  accordingly  send 
you  a  scrap  of  recent  manufacture,  and  you  will  observe  that 
instead  of  forwarding  my  epic  on  Sevastopol,  I  select  some- 
thing that  is  fitter  for  these  present  vernal  love  days  than 
the  bluster  of  heroic  verse  :  — 

"  SONG. 

"  Within  the  chambers  of  her  breast 
Love  lives  and  makes  his  spicy  nest. 


11:2  OLD     ACQUAINTANCE. 

Midst  downy  blooms  and  fragrant  flowers. 
And  there  he  dreams  away  the  hours  — 

Tliere  let  him  rest ! 
Some  time  hence,  when  the  cuckoo  sings, 
I  'li  come  by  night  and  bind  his  wir.g,,  — 
Bind  him  that  he  shall  not  roam 
!•  roin  his  Marm  white  virgin  home. 

"  Maiden  of  the  summer  season. 

Angel  of  the  rosy  time, 
Come,  unless  some  graver  reason 

Bid  thee  scorn  my  rhyme  ; 
Come  from  thy  serener  height. 
On  a  golden  cloud  descending, 
Come  ere  Love  hath  taken  Higlit, 
And  let  tiiy  stay  be  like  the  light, 
"When  its  glory  hath  no  ending 

In  the  Northern  night  1  " 

Now  and  then  we  get  a  glimpse  of  Thackeray  in 
his  letters.     In  one  of  them  he  says  :  — 

"  Thackeray  came  a  few  days  ago  and  read  one  of  his  lec- 
tures at  our  house  ftliat  on  George  the  Third,  and  we 
asked  about  a  dozen  persons  to  come  and  hear  it,  among  the 

rest,  your  handsome  countrywoman,  Mrs.  R S .     It 

was  very  pleasant,  with  that  agreeable  intermixture  of 
tragedy  and  comedy  that  tells  so  well  when  judiciously 
managed.  He  will  not  print  them  for  some  time  to  come, 
intending  to  read  them  at  some  of  the  principal  places  in 
England,  and  perhaps  Scotland. 

"  What  are  you  doing  in  America?  You  are  too  happy 
and  independent !  '  O  fortunatos  Agricolas,  sua  si  bona 
norint : '  I  am  not  quite  sure  of  my  Latin  (which  is  rusty 
from  old  agei,  but  I  am  sure  of  the  sentiment,  which  is  that 
when  people  are  too  happy,  they  don't  know  it,  and  so  take 
to  quarrelling  to  relieve  the  monotony  of  their  blue  sky. 


OLD      ACQUAINTANCE.  113 

Some  of  these  days  you  will  split  your  great  kingdom  iu 
two,  I  suppose,  and  then  — 

"  My  wife's  mother,  Mrs.  Basil  Montagu,  is  very  ill,  and 
we  arc  apprehensive  of  a  fatal  result,  which,  in  truth,  the 
mere  fact  of  her  age  'eighty-two  or  eighty-three)  is  enough 
to  warrant.  Ah,  this  terrible  age !  The  young  people,  I 
dare  say,  think  that  we  live  too  long.  Yet  how  short  it  is  to 
look  back  on  life !  Why,  1  saw  the  house  the  other  day 
where  I  used  to  play  with  a  wooden  sword  when  I  was  five 
years  old !  It  cannot  surely  be  eighty  years  ago !  What 
has  occurred  since  ?  Why,  nothing  tliat  is  worth  putting 
down  on  paper.  A  few^  nonsense  verses,  a  flogging  or  two 
(richly  deserved),  and  a  few  white-bait  dinners,  and  the 
whole  is  reckoned  up.  Let  us  begin  again."  [Here  he 
makes  some  big  letters  in  a  school-boy  hand,  which  have  a 
very  pathetic  look  on  the  page.] 

In  a  letter  written  in  1836  he  gives  me  a  graphic 
picture  of  sad  times  in  India  :  — 

"  All  our  anxiety  here  at  present  is  the  Indian  mutiny. 
We  ourselves  have  great  cause  for  trouble.  Our  son  ythe 
only  son  1  have,  indeed)  escaped  from  Delhi  lately.  He  is 
now  at  Meerut.  He  and  four  or  live  other  ofticers,  four 
women,  and  a  child  escaped.  The  men  were  obliged  to 
drop  the  women  a  fearful  height  from  the  walls  of  the  fort, 
amidst  showers  of  bullets.  A  round  shot  passed  within  a 
yard  of  my  son,  and  one  of  the  ladies  had  a  bullet  through 
her  shoulder.  They  were  seven  days  and  seven  nights  iu 
the  jungle,  witliout  money  or  meat,  scarcely  any  clothes,  no 
shoes.  They  forded  ri\  ers,  lay  on  the  wet  ground  at  night, 
lapped  water  from  the  puddles,  and  finally  reached  Meerut. 
The  lady  ahe  mother  of  the  three  other  ladies)  had  not  lier 
wound  dressed,  or  seen,  indeed,  for  upward  of  a  week. 
Their  feet  were  full  of  thorns.  My  son  had  nothing  but  a 
shirt,  a  pair  of  trousers,  and  a  flannel  waistcoat.  How 
they  contrived  to  lire  I  don't  know ;  I  suppose  from  small 
gifts  of  rice,  etc.,  from  the  natives. 


114  OLD     ACQUAINTANCE. 

"  When  I  find  any  little  thing  now  that  disturbs  my  se- 
renity, and  vhich  I  might  in  former  times  have  magnified 
into  an  evil,  1  think  of  what  Europeans  suffer  from  the 
vengeance  of  the  Indians,  and  pass  it  hy  in  quiet. 

"I  received  Mr.  Hillard's  epitaph  on  my  dear  kind  friend 
Kenyon.  Thank  Iiim  in  my  name  for  it.  Tliere  are  some 
copies  to  he  reserved  of  a  lithograph  now  in  progress  ^  a  por- 
trait of  Kenyon)  for  his  American  friends.  Should  it  be 
completed  in  time,  Mr.  Sumner  will  be  asked  to  take  thera 
over.  1  have  put  down  your  name  for  one  of  those  who  would 
wish  to  have  this  little  memento  of  a  good  kind  man 

"  I  shall  never  visit  America,  be  assured,  or  the  continent 
of  Europe,  or  any  distant  region.  I  have  reached  nearly  to 
the  length  of  my  tether.  I  have  grown  old  and  apathetic 
and  stupid.  All  I  care  for,  in  the  way  of  personal  enjoy- 
ment, is  quiet,  ease,  —  to  have  nothing  to  do,  nothing  to 
think  of.  My  only  glance  is  backward.  There  is  so  little 
before  me  that  1  would  rather  not  look  that  way." 

In  a  later  letter  he  again  speaks  of  his  son  and 
the  war  in  India  :  ■ — 

"My  son  is  not  in  the  list  of  killed  and  wounded,  thank 
God  I  He  was  before  Delhi,  having  rolnuteered  thither  after 
his  escape.  We  trust  that  he  is  at  present  safe,  but  every 
mail  is  pregnant  with  bloody  tidings,  and  we  do  not  find 
ourselves  yet  in  a  position  to  rejoice  securely.  What  a 
terrible  war  this  Indian  war  is  !  Are  all  people  of  black 
blood  ci-uel,  cowardly,  and  treacherous?  If  it  were  a  case 
of  great  oppression  on  our  part,  I  could  understand  and 
(almost)  excuse  it ;  but  it  is  from  the  spoiled  portion  of  the 
Hindostanees  that  the  revengeful  mutiny  has  arisen.  One 
thing  is  quite  clear,  that  whatever  luxury  and  refinement 
have  done  for  our  race  (for  I  include  .\mericans  with  Eng- 
lish), they  have  not  diminished  the  courage  and  endurance 
and  heroism  for  which  I  think  we  have  formerly  been  fa- 
mous.    We   are   the   same  Sa.xons  still.     There  has  never 


OLD      ACQUAIXTAXCE.  115 

been  fiercer  fighting  than  in  some  of  the  battles  that  have 
lately  taken  place  in  India.  When  1  look  back  on  the  old 
history  books,  and  see  that  all  history  consists  of  little  else 
than  the  bloody  feuds  of  nation  with  nation,  I  almost  won- 
der that  God  has  not  extinguished  the  cruel,  selfish  animals 
that  we  dignify  with  the  name  of  men.  No  —  I  cry  for- 
giveness :  let  the  women  live,  if  they  can,  without  the  men. 
I  used  the  word  '  men '  only." 

Here  is  a  pleasant  paragraph  about  "Aurora 
Leigh  "  :  — 

"The  most  successful  book  of  the  season  has  been  Mrs. 
Browning's  '  Aurora  Leigh. '  I  could  wish  some  things  altered, 
I  confess ;  but  as  it  is,  it  is  by  far  (a  hundred  times  over)  the 
finest  poem  ever  written  by  a  woman.  "We  know  little  or 
nothing  of  Sappho,  —nothing  to  induce  comparison,  —  and  all 
other  wearers  of  petticoats  must  courtesy  to  the  ground." 

In  several  of  his  last  letters  to  me  there  are 
frequent  allusions  to  our  civil  war.  Here  is  an 
extract  from  an  epistle  written  in  1861:  — 

"  We  read  with  painful  attention  the  accounts  of  your 
great  quarrel  in  America.  We  know  nothing  beyond  what 
we  are  told  by  the  New  York  papers,  and  these  are  the 
stories  of  one  of  the  comliatants.  I  am  afraid  that,  however 
you  may  mend  the  schism,  you  will  never  be  so  strong 
again.  I  hope,  however,  that  something  may  arise  to  ter- 
minate the  bloodshed ;  for,  after  all,  fighting  is  an  unsatis- 
factory way  of  coming  at  the  truth.  If  you  were  to  stand 
up  at  once  (and  finally)  against  the  slave-trade,  your  band 
of  soldiers  would  have  a  more  decided  principle  to  fight  for. 
But  — 

"  —  But  I  really  know  little  or  notliing.  I  hope  that  at 
Boston  you  are  comparatively  peaceful,  and  I  know  that  you 
are  more  abolitionist  than  in  the  more  southern  countries. 

"There  is  notliing  new  doing  here  in  the  way  of  books. 


116  OLD     ACQUAINTANCE. 

The  last  hook  I  have  seen  is  called  '  Taunhauser,'  published 
by  Chapman  and  Hall,  —  a  poem  under  feigned  names,  but 
really  written  by  Robert  Lytton  and  Julian  Fane.  It  is  not 
good  enough  for  the  first,  but  (as  I  conjecture)  too  good  for 
the  last  The  songs  which  decide  the  contest  of  the  bards 
are  the  worst  portions  of  the  book. 

"  I  read  some  time  ago  a  novel  which  has  not  made  much 
noise,  but  which  is  prodigiously  clever, — '  City  and  Suburb.' 
The  story  hangs  in  parts,  but  it  is  full  of  weighty  sentences. 
We  have  no  poet  since  Tennyson  except  Robert  Lytton, 
who,  yon  know,  calls  himself  Owen  Meredith.  Poetry  in 
England  is  assuming  a  new  character,  and  not  a  better 
character.  It  has  a  sort  of  pre-Raphaelite  tendency  which 
does  not  suit  my  aged  feelings.  I  am  for  Love,  or  the 
World  well  lost.  But  I  forget  that,  if  I  live  beyond  the  21st 
of  ne.\t  >"oveniber,  I  shall  be  seventy-four  years  of  age.  I 
have  been  obliged  to  resign  my  Commissionership  of  Lu- 
nacy, not  being  able  to  bear  the  pain  of  travelling.  By  this 
I  lose  about  £  900  a  year.  I  am,  therefore,  sufficiently 
poor  even  for  a  poet.  Browning,  as  you  know,  has  lost  his 
wife.  He  is  coming  with  his  little  boy  to  live  in  England. 
I  rejoice  at  this,  for  I  think  that  the  English  shoidd  live 
in  England,  especially  in  their  youth,  when  people  learn 
things  that  they  never  forget  afterward." 

Near  the  close  of  1864  he  writes  :  — 

"Since  I  last  heard  from  you,  nothing  except  what  is 
melancholy  seems  to  have  taken  place.  You  seem  all  busy 
killing  each  other  in  America-  Some  friends  of  yours  and 
several  friends  of  mine  have  died.  Among  the  last  I  can- 
not help  placing  ^"athaniel  Hawthorne,  for  whom  I  had  a 

sincere  regard He  was  about  your  best  prose  writer, 

I  think,  and  intermingled  with  his  humor  was  a  great  deal 
of  tenderness.     To  die  so  soon  ! 

"  You  are  so  easily  affronted  in  America,  if  we  (English) 
say  anything  about  putting  an  end  to  your  war,  that  I  will 
not  venture  to  hint  at  the  subject.    Nevertheless,  I  wish 


OLD     ACQUAINTAXCE.  117 

that  you  were  all  at  peace  again,  for  your  own  sakes  and 
for  the  sake  of  human  nature.  I  detest  fighting  now,  al- 
though 1  was  a  great  admirer  of  fighting  m  my  youth.  My 
youth  ?  1  wonder  where  it  has  gone.  It  has  left  me  with 
gray  hairs  and  rheumatism,  and  jilenty  of  (too  many  other) 
infirmities.  I  stagger  and  stumble  along,  with  almost  sev- 
enty-six years  on  my  head,  upon  failing  limbs,  which  no 
longer  enable  me  to  walk  half  a  mile.  I  see  a  great  deal,  all 
behind  me  (the  Past),  but  the  prospect  before  me  is  not 
cheerful.  Sometimes  I  wish  that  1  had  tried  harder  for 
what  IS  called  Fame,  but  generally  (as  now)  I  care  very 
little  about  it.  After  all,  —  unless  one  could  be  Shakespeare, 
which  (clearly)  is  not  an  easy  matter,  —  of  M-hat  value  is  a 
little  puff  of  smoke  from  a  review  ?  If  we  could  settle  perma- 
nently who  is  to  be  the  Homer  or  Shakespeare  of  our  lime,  it 
might  be  worth  something;  but  we  cannot.     Is  it  Jones, 

or  Smith,  or ?    Alas  !  1  get  sliort-sighted  on  this  point, 

and  cannot   penetrate  the   impenetrable  dark.     Make   my 
remembrances  acceptable  to  Longfellow,  to  Lowell,  to  Em- 
erson, and  to  any  one  else  who  remembers  me. 
"  Yours,  ever  sincerely, 

"  B.  "\V.  Proctkr." 

And  here  are  a  few  paragi-aphs  from  the  last  letter 
I  ever  received  from  Procter's  loving  hand:  — 

"  Although  I  date  this  from  Weymouth  Street,  yet  I  am 
writing  140  or  1.50  miles  away  from  London.  Perliaps 
this  temporary  retreat  from  our  great,  noisy,  turbulent  city 
reminds  me  that  I  have  been  very  unmindful  of  your  letter, 
received  long  ago.  But  I  have  been  busy,  and  my  writ- 
ing now  is  not  a  simple  matter,  as  it  was  fifty  years  ago. 
1  have  great  difficulty  in  forming  the  letters,  and  you  would 
be  surprised  to  learn  with  what  labor  this  task  is  performed. 
Then  I  have  been  incessantly  occupied  in  writing  (I  refer  to 
the  mechanical  part  only)  the  '  Memoir  of  Charles  Lamb.'  It 
is  not  my  book,  —  i.  e.  not  my  property,  —  but  one  which  I 


118  OLD     ACQUAINTANCE. 

was  hired  to  write,  aud  it  forms  my  last  earnings.  Yoii 
will  have  heard  of  the  book  (perhaps  seen  it^  some  time 
since.  It  has  l)een  very  well  received.  I  would  not  have 
engaged  myself  on  anything  else,  but  I  had  great  regard 
for  Charles  Lamb,  and  so  (.somehow  or  other)  I  have  con- 
trived to  reach  the  end. 

"  I  hate  already  (long  ago)  written  something  about  Haz- 
litt,  but  I  have  received  more  than  one  application  for  it, 
in  case  I  can  manage  to  complete  my  essay.  As  in  the  case 
of  Lamb,  I  am  really  the  only  person  living  who  knew  much 
about  his  daily  life.  I  ha\e  not,  however,  quite  the  same 
incentive  to  carry  me  on.  Indeed,  I  am  not  certain  that  I 
should  be  able  to  travel  to  the  real  Finis. 

"  My  wife  is  very  grateful  for  the  copies  of  my  dear  Ade- 
laide's poems  which  you  sent  her.  She  appears  surprised 
to  hear  that  1  have  not  transmitted  her  thanks  to  you  be- 
fore. 

"  We  get  the  '  Atlantic  Monthly  '  regularly.  I  need  not 
tell  you  how  much  better  the  poetry  is  than  at  its  com- 
mencement. Very  good  is  '  Released,' in  the  July  number, 
and  several  of  the  stories ;  but  they  are  in  London,  and  I 
cannot  particularize  them. 

"  We  were  very  much  pleased  with  Colonel  Holmes,  the 
son  of  your  friend  aud  contributor.  He  seems  a  very  intel- 
ligent, modest  young  man ;  as  little  military  as  need  be,  and, 
like  Coriolanus.  not  baring  his  wounds  (if  he  has  any)  for 
public  gaze.  When  you  see  Dr.  Holmes,  pray  tell  liini  how 
nuicli  I  and  my  wife  liked  his  son. 

"  We  are  at  the  present  moment  rusticating  at  Malvern 
Wells.  We  are  on  the  side  of  a  great  hill  (wliich  you  would 
call  small  in  America),  and  our  intercourse  is  only  with  the 
flowers  and  bees  and  swallows  of  the  season.  Sometimes 
we  encounter  a  wasp,  which  I  suppose  comes  from  over 
seas ! 

"The  Storys  are  living  two  or  three  miles  off,  and  called 
upon  us  a  few  days  azo.  You  have  not  seen  his  Sibyl,  which 
I  think  very  fine,  and  as  containing  a  very  great  future.     But 


OLD      ACQUAINTAXCE.  119 

the  young  poets  generally  disappoint  us,  and  are  too  content 
with  startling  us  into  admiration  of  tlieir  first  works,  and 
then  go  to  sleep. 

"I  wish  that  I  liad,  when  younger,  made  more  notes 
al)0ut  my  contemporaries  ;  for,  being  of  no  faction  in  politics, 
it  happens  that  I  have  known  far  more  literary  men  than 
any  other  person  of  my  time.  In  counting  up  tlie  names  of 
persons  known  to  me  who  were,  in  some  way  or  other,  con- 
nected with  literature,  1  reckoned  up  more  than  one  liun- 
dred.  But  then  I  have  had  more  than  sixty  years  to  do  this 
in.  My  first  acquaintance  of  this  sort  was  Bowles,  the 
poet.     This  was  about  18(J5. 

"  Although  I  can  scarcely  write,  I  am  able  to  say,  in  con- 
clusion, that  I  am 

"  Very  sincerely  yours, 

"B.  W.  Pkoctkr." 

Procter  was  an  ardent  student  of  the  works  of 
our  older  English  dramatists,  and  he  had  a  special 
fondness  for  such  writers  as  Decker,  Marlowe,  Hey- 
wood,  Webster,  and  Fletcher.  Many  of  his  own 
dramatic  scenes  are  modelled  on  that  passionate  and 
romantic  school.  He  had  great  relish  for  a  good 
modern  novel,  too  ;  and  I  recall  the  titles  of  several 
■which  he  recommended  warmly  for  my  perusal  and 
republication  in  America.  "When  I  first  came  to 
know  him,  the  duties  of  his  office  as  a  Commis- 
sioner obliged  him  to  travel  about  the  kingdom, 
sometimes  on  long  journeys,  and  he  told  me  his 
pocket  companion  was  a  cheap  reprint  of  Emerson's 
"  Essays,"  which  he  found  such  agreeable  reading 
that  he  never  left  home  without  it.  Longfellow's 
"  Hyperion  "  was  another  of  his  favorite  books  dur- 
ing  the  years  he  was  on  duty. 


120  OLD     ACQUAIXTAXCE. 

Among  the  last  agreeable  visits  I  made  to  the  old 
poet  was  one  with  reference  to  a  proposition  of  his 
own  to  omit  several  songs  and  other  short  poems 
from  a  new  issue  of  his  works  then  in  press.  I 
stoutly  opposed  the  ignoring  of  certain  old  favorites 
of  mine,  and  the  poet's  wife  joined  with  me  in  de- 
ciding against  the  author  in  his  proposal  to  cast 
aside  so  many  beautiful  songs,  —  songs  as  well 
worth  saving  as  any  in  the  volume.  Procter  ar- 
gued that,  being  past  seventy,  he  had  now  reached 
to  yeai-s  of  discretion,  and  that  his  judgment  ought 
to  be  followed  without  a  murmur.  I  held  out  firm 
to  the  end  of  our  discussion,  and  we  settled  the 
matter  with  this  compromise  :  he  was  to  expunge 
whatever  he  chose  from  the  English  edition,  but  I 
was  to  have  my  own  way  with  the  American  one. 
So  to  this  day  the  American  reprint  is  the  only 
complete  collection  of  Barry  Cornwall's  earliest 
pieces,  for  I  held  on  to  all  the  old  lyrics,  without 
discarding  a  single  line. 

The  poet's  figure  was  short  and  full,  and  his  voice 
had  a  low,  veiled  tone  habitually  in  it,  which  made 
it  sometimes  difficult  to  hear  distinctly  what  he 
was  saying.  "When  in  conversation,  he  liked  to  be 
very  near  his  listener,  and  thus  stand,  as  it  were, 
on  confidential  ground  with  him.  His  turn  of 
thought  was  cheerful  among  his  friends,  and  he 
proceeded   readily  into   a  vein  of  wit  and  nimble 


OLD     ACQUAINTANCE.  121 

expression.  Verbal  felicity  seemed  natural  to  him, 
and  his  epithets,  evidently  unprepared,  were  always 
perfect.  He  disliked  cant  and  hard  ways  of  judg- 
ing character.  He  praised  easily.  He  had  no  wish 
to  stand  in  anybody's  shoes  but  his  own,  and  he 
said,  "  There  is  no  literary  vice  of  a  darker  shade 
than  envy."  Talleyrand's  recipe  for  perfect  happi- 
ness was  the  opposite  to  his.  He  impressed  every 
one  who  came  near  him  as  a  born  gentleman,  chival- 
rous and  generous  in  a  marked  degree,  and  it  was  the 
habit  of  those  who  knew  him  to  have  an  affection 
for  him.  Altering  a  line  of  Pope,  this  counsel  might 
have  been  safely  tendered  to  all  the  authors  of  his 
day,  — 

"Disdain  whatever  Procter's  mind  disdains.". 


Cambridge :  Electrotyped  and  Printed  by  Welch,  Bigelow,  &  Co. 


YESTERDAYS   WITH   AUTHORS. 

By  JAMES   T.    FIELDS. 

1  vol.    12ino.    $  2.00. 


Contents  . 

•INTRODUCTORY.  —  THACKER.W.  -  HAWTHORNE. 

—  DICKENS.  —WORDSWORTH.  — 

MISS   MITFOKD. 


"  Mr.  Fields  has  certainly  met  with  signal  success  in  the  compo- 
sition of  an  entertaininsj  volume.  It  o.fcrs  a  rare  charm  to  the 
lovers  of  literary  anecdote,— a  class  which  probably  includes  tiic 
whole  of  its  readers.  —  and  in  many  considerable  portions  possesses 
an  interest  no  less  enticing  than  the  naive  recitals  of  Boswell  or  the 
pleasant  recollections  of  Crabb  Robinson."  —  .Ww  Vork  Tribune. 

"  The  world  owes  Mr.  Fields  many  thanks  for  his  '  Yesterdaj's 
with  Authors,'  —  a  volume  full  of  reminiscences,  anecdotes,  and 
letters  of  some  of  the  wTiters  whom  Mr.  Fields  has  known.  Thack- 
eray, Hawthorne,  Dickens,  and  Miss  Mitford  are  the  chief  person- 
asjes  described,  and  what  is  said  of  them  all  is  fresh  and  interestiflg. 
Tlie  paper  on  Wordsworth  gives  some  of  his  traits  as  distinctly  as 
any  description  we  have  ever  seen,  and  the  whole  book  is  good."  — 
Springfield  Republican. 

"  This  work  is  far  better  than  Crabb  Robinson's  de'icjluful  book, 
the  fault  of  which  was  that,   being  chiefly  a  . 

glimpses  of  eminent  people;  whereas  .Mr.  V- 
not  elaborated,   but  spirited,  graceful,  and 
.Much  of  what  he  tells  us  is  t'ne  result  of  pjr-  ...      ..  .^-    -:..'. 

obsen-ation,  and  for  the  rest  he  has  allowed  ;lic  su;.jtjc:s  of  his 

reminiscences  to  speak  for  themselves  in  their  many  letters.    This 

is  r-.rf'-:'-'-V.-  the  :-!SC  w-rh  D-c'-:^-=.  ffm  whoTii  there  is  a  double 

"•''■-•     the  late  Pro- 

.Tespondence 

Montagu  or 


•  The  volume  is  full  of  interest  to  the  lovers  of  those  great  au- 

rs."  —  Xe7t'  York  H'orld.  '  -  -  ' 


JAMES    R.  OSGOOD   &   CO, 

Publishers,  Boston. 


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5.  The  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish.     By  H.  W. 

Longfellow.     Illustrated. 

6.  Henoch  Arden.   By  Alfred  Tennyson.   Illustrated. 

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JAMES  R.  OSGOOD  &  CO., 

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